


Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, NaNoWriMo, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most diseases kill people.  This one... alters them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nanowrimo 2011. All chapters were written and posted during the month of November.

I

"You ready?"

Matt looks up from where he is stuffing the last of his dirty – no, make that _filthy_ – clothes into the backpack that John had loaned him. The thing can only be described as hideous, some oddly proportioned camo-green and brown thing from the '70's with an endless multitude of miniscule pockets, pouches and compartments. It would have been great for shit like his ipad and laptop and cell phone and all the other really important, essential stuff that he wasn't actually allowed to bring on the damn trip.

He shakes the hair out of his eyes as he wrestles with the straps, huffs out a breath. "McClane," he says, "I was ready to leave like five days ago."

John snorts. "You're the one who said you wanted to be part of the team," he points out.

"Yeah, but—"

"Wanted to make a difference, you said. Put your skills to work on the right side of the law for a change."

Matt's pretty sure he never said anything about the law, right or wrong – his somewhat dubious past is still a bit of a sore point where he and McClane are concerned – but he's not going to debate that point now. " _Yes_ , fine, but—"

"Now I know I'm gettin' old, kid, and my memory ain't what it used to be, but I seem to recall that you actually went to the captain with that little plan. Not the other way around."

Matt gives up on fighting with the straps and gives John his full attention. "Okay, _yes_ , McClane, you got me. I totally wanted to be part of the team. I _asked_ to be part of the team. Which I _thought_ would mean sitting in a nice cushy office at 1PP analyzing emails for coded messages or tracking website owners through numbered accounts or, I don't know, shutting down meth labs. I did not think it would mean traipsing through the woods for a goddamn week like some kind of modern day Grizzly Adams!"

"Cushy," John says drily. He sets his own bag – a nice streamlined utilitarian black thing that looks brand new – next to the door of the cabin and slides a look toward Lambert. "You think our office is cushy, Joe?"

"I'm not sure I'd go with cushy. I might say cosy," Joe says. "My chair only has three holes. And you know, if I lean back and squint at the ceiling just right, one of the water stains looks exactly like Paris Hilton."

"They just upgraded my system to Windows 2000," Connie puts in. "Next year I'm hoping to get a printer."

"Yeah, hah. Funny. Not only do I get to go on a 'wilderness retreat', I get to go on a wilderness retreat with The Three Stooges."

"You're Moe," John says to Lambert.

Matt throws up his hands, goes back to struggling with the straps of his pack and tries to ignore the rest of the conversation (even though Connie's right, she _does_ always get stuck being Larry.)

"Goddamn wilderness retreat," he mutters under his breath. He's pretty sure the asshole who came up with that term, along with others like "team building exercises" and "soul awakenings", should be fed to wild dogs. His back is still sore from when he tripped over that downed log three days ago, he's pretty sure the rash on his arm is poison ivy even though John says it's not, and he would happily sell his own mother to terrorists for just a sip of red bull. Just a taste. That's all he needs. Whose stupid idea was it that they had to subsist on water and coffee that tastes like it was scraped from the side of a nuclear silo?

He swipes a hand through his hair, pauses to take a breather. Outside the cabin he can hear Cranston loading up his car, and beyond that nothing but a quartet of songbirds calling out in the trees. No car horns, no rattle of the air conditioner, no chatter in a dozen different languages, no music except the birds.

He misses the constant cacophony of the city. But he supposes this is nice, too. Peaceful, even.

And the members of the anti-terrorist task force seem to have accepted him as one of the gang. It's sort of… good, in a strange and totally unnatural kind of way. Years of being the scrawny, uncoordinated kid who was always picked last to the team in gym class tend to make a person think that he'll never actually be truly wanted for anything. And then he discovered computers, and programming isn't exactly a group event. Matt avoids people, he _knows_ that he avoids people, and he's always been perfectly happy avoiding people. So. Yeah. Finding out that this group thinks he might actually fit in is… weird. Finding out that he actually _wants_ to fit in is even weirder.

And then there's the John McClane factor.

Because spending an entire week with McClane? Yeah, that didn't exactly suck. Even if part of it did involve holding a 'truth stick' and talking about that time the Warlock spread the rumour that he was a hermaphrodite on six different gaming forums. And, Matt considers as he bends back to work and finally fastens the last recalcitrant buckle, even that truth session turned out to be a pretty good thing, when on the walk back to the cabin McClane had clapped him on the shoulder and then let his hand linger there, squeezing his neck and making small talk and ignoring the hint of colour that still bloomed in Matt's cheeks. Matt would swear that the heat from McClane's palm lingered on his skin for an hour afterward. And when he finally fell asleep under the scratchy blanket, listening to the chirp of the crickets outside and John's slow even breathing from the other cot, he got his first good sleep of the week.

So okay, fine, if he was forced to admit it – if, for example, he was kidnapped by a muscle-bound Russian mercenary and threatened with the removal of his eyeballs with barbeque tongs – he might say that the last week hasn't been all bad.

He's never gonna let John know that, though.

He's tugged the backpack onto his cot and is doing a last visual check of the room to make sure he hasn't left anything behind when he realizes that John is talking to him. He looks up to see that at some point Connie and Joe have left, and now it's just him and John. John had spent the last week getting scruffier by the day, but sometime this morning he'd taken the time to get cleaned up. Now, with John leaning against the door jamb with his arms folded over that impressive chest and that goddamn tattoo poking out from the sleeve of his tight white t-shirt, Matt is once again reminded why his knees sometimes get a little weak when he's left alone with John McClane. And this time it's not like when they get together in the city. There isn't a pizza to eat or a game to watch or a beer to drink. And it's not like the whole rest of this week, when there was another member of the task force to distract him or some loopy crazy hippy throwback from the '60's telling them to 'get in touch with their feelings'.

This time, there's just him and John. Alone. And a loooong drive back to New York.

John cocks one brow expectantly, and Matt remembers that he's actually supposed to talk now.

"Huh?" he says. Because he's totally awesome like that.

John shakes his head and smirks. "I _said_ ," he says, "you're just pissed because we took you away from your girlfriend for a week."

And then there's that. That… weird obsessive belief of John's – that Matt has a secret girlfriend hidden away in a bunker somewhere in the wilds of Jersey. It's strange. Lucy says it's because her dad can't imagine someone being happy and content unless he's paired up, and that this just proves that John is still stuck in a 50's mentality where women should be barefoot and pregnant, and then that usually deteriorates into a rant about the divorce and ends with her icily referring to her father as 'John' and Matt knowing that the next time John calls her she's going to be a bitch to him for no apparent reason and feeling super guilty about that. So yeah. Lucy has issues where John is concerned, and Matt's never entirely sure he can trust anything the woman says.

Now, he just sighs. "I told you, dude. Like eight billion times. I don't have a girlfriend."

"Boyfriend, then."

Matt looks up quickly, because that's totally not something one with a 50's mentality would say, but John is already pushing away from the doorjamb, leaning down to pick up his bag, and Matt can't see his eyes.

"Dude. Really?"

"Dude," John mocks. "I might be a dinosaur, but I do realize it's the 21st century. Men do have boyfriends these days."

"Men have always had boyfriends," Matt points out. "Jesus, McClane, every culture has a history of men loving men. In Greek mythology, there's a ton of stories about the gods who fell in love with men. But the truth has always been supressed by an intrinsically homophobic society that seeks to perpetuate the lie of hetero-normative—"

"Jeeeeesus," John interrupts. "Are you still talking?"

"I'm just saying that—"

"Boyfriend or girlfriend, kid? If you had to choose."

"What?" Matt's sure he hit puberty, he really is, but the squeak that comes out of his throat reminds him uncomfortably of that year that he spent hiding under the covers jerking off to photos of David Boreanaz.

"Boyfriend. Or. Girlfriend," John says slowly. "It's a pretty simple question."

"I… What? That's so completely— I don't even know what you…. What?"

And that look on John's face? Is totally the look that was on his mom's face when she caught him with those magazines. And seriously, they were talking about the task force, like, five seconds ago. Matt has no idea how they got from "wilderness retreats suck monkey ass" to "coming out" in a millisecond, and while he's never been the type to march at the front of the parade he's still perfectly proud of who he is and he's never kept it a secret, it's just—

"Fine," he huffs out. "I wouldn't be averse to a boyfriend. Happy?"

"Colour me surprised," John murmurs. He shoves his pack over one shoulder, turns toward the door. "By the way, kid," he says on his way out, "Grizzly Adams wouldn't work for you. You could never pull off the beard."

* * *

John's spent a lot of years on the force, and he's been around the merry-go-round a few times. He knows that when shit is going down and split second decisions have to be made, sometimes he's not the most subtle guy in the world. He also knows that his methods usually gets results. For the most part, his superior officers have had his back. These days, Scalvino usually sighs, rubs his forehead, and reaches for the Tums. Cobb was a little less forgiving.

John's used to thinking on his feet and going with the flow, and worrying about the fallout later.

But he has no idea what the hell just happened.

He thinks he might have just browbeat the kid into a confession. Jesus, he might as well have shone a bright light into Matt's eyes while he was at it.

John waits until the cabin door has shut behind him before he lets his shoulders slump. He didn't want it to play out that way.

There's a honk from Connie's little shitbox of a car, and he lifts a hand to Joe and Connie as they leave, first to drop off Joe and then toward Connie's parents place in Trenton for the remainder of the weekend. Cranston's already piled the rest of the team in his 4x4 and hit the road in a cloud of dust; and they saw the back of Carmichael, the rabbity little psychologist who led the retreat, over an hour ago.

Now it's just him and the kid.

Shit.

John scrubs a hand over his face, takes a deep breath. The best way to handle this, he decides, is just not to handle it at all. Simply pretend the conversation didn't happen, or that it happened in a completely different way. Sure, now he knows that Matt likes guys, but he always knew that Matt likes guys – the doe-eyed looks he occasionally shot John's way when he thought he wasn't looking were pretty fucking obvious. Granted, he thought they'd die out once the whole 'you saved my life a dozen times' high wore off, but a year later he still sometimes catches Matt throwing him those looks. And he's been dealing with it.

And it's not like the confirmation of what he already knew is going to change anything. Because _he_ doesn't like guys. He was married for fourteen years, for fucks sake, and Holly is all woman.

And sure, he enjoys spending time with Matt – loves seeing the kid get all riled up about the latest computer doohickey that comes out on the market; loves mentioning someone like Bill O'Reilly and watching Matt splutter and flail in indignation. He likes seeing Matt's quick brain in action even more than watching that mouth that never shuts up. He likes that he can sit quietly with him, too – that just because Matt has twenty thousand things going through his head at once, he doesn't always feel the need to share every single one.

But that's just… friendship. They went through a fuckload of shit on that fourth of July weekend, and they bonded. Against all odds, the bond stuck.

It doesn't mean anything.

So on the drive home, he'll just act like nothing happened. Tease the kid about his hair, make sure to play Fogerty extra loud on the old stereo in the car. Business as usual. On Monday he'll see Matt in the office and show him the ropes. And every few weeks they'll get together for pizza and a beer and they'll chat like they always chat and everything will be fine.

The cabin door squeaks open and John gives Matt a nod when he emerges out onto the sunlit porch.

Once they get back to the city, everything will be normal again.


	2. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

II

They cover the first twenty or thirty miles in silence.

It's not like this is all that unusual when traveling with John. He's pretty sure that half the time McClane forgets that he even has a stereo system in his car, and Matt doesn't feel the need to fill the empty spaces with chatter like he used to, back in the early days of their friendship when he was half in awe and half scared shitless just being alone with John McClane. Back then, even though he had gotten a crash course in McClane-ese on that fourth of July weekend, he was still learning to interpret all of John's grunts, smirks, and quirked eyebrows. And frankly, a big part of him was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for McClane to figure out that he didn't really want to hang out with a smartass computer whiz-kid half his age.

Once the babbling stopped, they learned to be comfortable together in the silences. But still, nothing is truly quiet in the city. There is the endless strident blasting of car horns, the music of a dozen nations spilling from a dozen different storefronts, voices raised in anger or amusement. There are vendors selling wares on the sidewalks. And depending on the neighbourhood in which they choose to eat and watch the game, there are sometimes women doing the same – though Matt notices that when they he and John are sitting in the car, waiting at a red light, those women often take one look at John and fade quietly back into the shadows while John drums his fingers lightly on the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, seemingly oblivious. With John McClane, you can't take the cop out of the man.

So yeah, Matt's used to silence.

But this is _silence_. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere silence. Rural silence. No sound but the swish of their tires on the asphalt. No other cars. No people. Not even a fucking deer.

This silence is both uncomfortable and unnerving. And the longer it goes on – the longer he stares out the passenger window at green grass, green fields, green trees, and finds himself jonesing for a glimpse of a mini-skirted streetwalker and some goddamn graffiti – the more he feels like he just might go out of his mind.

John, for his part, hasn't let his gaze waver from the empty road. Shoulders tense, mouth in a clipped line. Not mad, exactly, but undeniably stressed. Definitely a lot going on in the old chrome dome today. And Matt's willing to bet that roughly eighty-five percent of John's noggin is still trying to work out the new and fascinating fact that Matt likes to suck cock.

He can read John a lot better now than in the early days, but the McClane Manual didn't cover anything like this. So he really has no idea _what_ John is thinking, exactly, about this new cock-sucking Matt that's filling his brain. But at least John took it better than his dad. That time, the shiner didn't fade for a week.

He figures that as long as John doesn't figure out that what Matt really wants to do is suck _his_ cock, he's reasonably safe from another black eye.

Aaaand he really doesn't need that image filling his head. But there's nothing else to distract him. And when another five miles click by on the odometer, he can't take it anymore.

"So," he says, "our anniversary is coming up."

John flicks a puzzled look his way before turning his attention back to the road.

"Independence Day is only two weeks away," Matt clarifies. "Fourth of July. The grand old flag. Hot dogs and burgers on the barbeque, fireworks bursting in the night sky, crazed cirque du soleil-trained terrorists shutting down the American infrastructure and trying to kill us. You know, the traditional stuff."

John shoots him another look. "Is that what it was like for you, growing up?"

"Crazed circus terrorists?" Matt raises a brow. "No, my mother went for the more classic European inspired bad guys. The kind with sleek John Phillips suits and bad German accents."

"I know the type," John mutters.

Right. Of _course_ he does.

When Matt got out of the hospital and they actually let him have a computer again, the first thing he did was research John McClane. Actually, the first thing he did was set up his system so that the federal watchdog thought he was doing nothing more threatening than playing World of Warcraft, _then_ he researched John McClane. He paid an exorbitant fee on eBay for a dog-eared People magazine with John and his ex-wife on the cover. He even managed to track down a grainy video of McClane's appearance on Nightline, and spent an evening playing it over and over, staring in slack-jawed fascination at this younger, thinner version of John. All that _hair_ , but still the same crooked grin, the same laugh lines around his eyes. He could see how that John could grow into _his_ John – more craggy, more battle-weary, but the same determination and the same fuck 'em all attitude.

"And don't be a smartass," John continues. "Barbeques and hot dogs. Fireworks in the backyard. Is that what you did?"

Matt tries to imagine his father standing over a smoking grille, or his mother slinging burgers onto paper plates. There'd be a better chance of John suddenly breaking out in a chorus of 'Testify'. He slumps back in his seat. "More like finger sandwiches and lace doilies while the string quartet plays the Top 40. If the year was 1942."

John grunts. He's heard all the stories from Matt's childhood – all the ones that Matt's willing to share.

"What about you?" Matt says, rousing himself. He made a promise the moment he stepped foot outside the door of his parent's house that he wasn't going to fucking dwell, and he's not. He turns to John with a grin. "You're the backyard fireworks kind of guy. And I bet Lucy totally set her hair on fire with one of the sparklers."

John is quiet for so long that Matt thinks maybe he didn't hear the question. Then he sighs.

"Jack and Lucy were usually out west with Holly. She always enrolled them in classes as soon as school let out. Riding classes, ballet, soccer. Y'know, keep 'em busy over the holidays. Cost a fucking fortune. I didn't mind," he adds quickly.

"Well—"

"It was good for them," he says, and Matt can't help but think that he's trying – still – to convince himself of that. "I… missed them, though. I got 'em for a week, ten days maybe, every August."

"Shit."

John shrugs, but now the tension is back, the set of his shoulders stiff. "Looks like neither of us got what we wanted back then, kid."

"Yeah," Matt agrees. His fourth of July's have always sucked, and for a while he thought it was really fucked up that the one in which he got chased around the country by cyber-terrorists and shot in the calf should be his favourite. But the reason it was his favourite is sitting right next to him, and knowing that John never had a particularly good one either makes him sad and buoys him at the same time.

This might actually work.

He takes a breath. Now or never. "Anyway, McClane… John. So you've probably got plans this Fourth, but—"

"Car," John says.

"—if you don't, or if Lucy isn't coming over, or even… I just thought maybe we could get togeth—"

"Car," John says more emphatically.

"Huh?" Matt blinks, finally notices that John is slowing down, putting on his blinkers. And pulling in behind a ridiculous flaming red sports car parked at the side of the road. "Hey, maybe we should… maybe I can talk to myself," Matt says, throwing up his hands as John ignores him entirely, slides out of the seat and approaches the front of the vehicle.

So much for that. Matt hangs his head briefly, swipes a hand through his hair and tugs at the ends. You cannot take the motherfucking cop out of the motherfucking man.

"Sir," he can hear John calling as he opens his own door. The heat hits him like a closed fist. "Everything okay?"

"Well?"

John is bent toward the driver's door, but at Matt's voice he stands up straighter, turns to him with a frown. "Empty."

Matt shrugs as he comes around to the front of John's car, leans on the hood. The heat from the summer sun has baked into the metal, and he hisses before settling back more gingerly. "Probably ran out of gas."

John does a slow circle on the asphalt, those laser green eyes taking in the surrounding landscape. Matt doesn't have to look to know that it's still a whole lot of nothing. In the far distance there is what might be a farmhouse, some kind of shingled three-story monstrosity that is reachable only by a crooked dirt road, the kind of place that in a few weeks will have a roadside stand selling summer peaches and corn on the cob. On the other side of the two-lane blacktop is a clapboard church that wouldn't look out of place in a Grant Wood painting, a couple of cars parked haphazardly on the circular drive of crushed white rock.

Matt squints. The big double doors of the church are open, probably to let in some of the early summer breeze – a place like that definitely wouldn't have a/c – and he can hazily see movement within the dimness. Can vaguely sense someone, multiple someones, watching them from the shadows.

"I don't like it," John says quietly.

Matt rubs his arms, suddenly goose-bumped in the sun. He opens his mouth, closes it again. _Maybe he went to the church_ , he wants to say. But then John would suggest walking over to the church. Going inside the church. And Matt very much doesn't want to do that.

He pushes off from the car instead, wipes damp palms on the thighs of his jeans, suddenly eager to get John back on the road.

"Jeez, McClane, how many times have you run out of gas and had to—" He stops at McClane's glare, shakes his head and holds up his hands. "Okay, fine, you have never run out of gas. But how many times have you heard of someone running out of gas and needing to jog to the nearest station? A million times, right?"

McClane stares down the road.

"I guarantee you, John, I guarantee you we pass this guy a couple of miles up, sweating fucking buckets and carrying a jerry can. We can even stop and give him a lift. I won't even make you listen to my statistics that correlate incidents of deserted rural roads and hitchhikers with serial killings. And I have reams of data on that. I have _spreadsheets_ , McClane."

John finally stops drilling holes into the atmosphere at that, cocks his head and quirks him a smile. "Spreadsheets, huh?"

"Charts and graphs, too. I could give a lecture."

John seems to hesitate, his eyes drifting to the church, and Matt feels his unease grow. There are people there – he knows it, he can feel it – but it's still so goddamn _silent_. If the congregation is inside, where are the hymns and the rejoicing and the hallelujahs? Why are they just _watching_?

Matt shuffles his feet, gives a heavy sigh that he hopes indicates a whole lot of frustration. "Dude," he says, "the longer we stand here the closer some rich kid frat boy gets to dying of dehydration by the side of the road."

John hesitates for another long second, then shakes his head. "You're right," he says, and Matt feels the tension go out of his body in a rush. "If we see him, we'll stop and pick him up. And if he turns out to be an axe murderer, you can come back and haunt me."

"Rich kid frat boys are rarely axe murderers," Matt says confidently as he gets back in the passenger seat and buckles in. He shoots a glance at John and feels like ten kinds of fool, but he still locks his door. And when John doesn't do the same, he reaches across him and does it for him, and ignores John's amused expression. "They prefer poison."

"Well, we won't let him near your Red Bull, then," John says as he starts up and steers carefully around the red car. He lifts his hand from the steering wheel briefly to elaborately smack his forehead. "Oh, wait, that's right. You don't have any."

"You hurt me, McClane. Just for that, next time I'm over I'm making you a v-bomb."

John snorts and demands an explanation, and Matt refuses to tell him, and by the time John flips on a CD and turns up the volume – The Best of the Eagles, and Matt should just be thankful it's not CCR – the little church has faded into the distance and winked out of sight.

But they never do pass the owner of the sports car.

By the time they're approaching the city, Matt's almost certain that he imagined the whole thing. Sure, there were people inside the church – there were cars there, after all – but they were still settling in for the service. That would account for the movement he sensed inside; people were simply greeting neighbours, going to their seats in the pews. And why wouldn't those closest to the doors glance outside to watch the two strangers in their midst, standing at the side of the road and deep in discussion? They can't get many visitors out in the boondocks.

He can almost forget the way the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose when he looked at the gaping maw of the church door, open like a mouth. Ready to bite.


	3. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

III

Matt doesn't remember exactly how they made it into Manhattan.

John had turned on his police radio when they started coming across the wrecks in the streets, the cars abandoned on the middle of the road, doors left standing open. In some of them, the detritus of hastily backed bags could be seen, clothes spilling from partially open suitcases, backseats piled with mementos like photo albums and delicate china figurines. On the concrete next to a crashed sedan, Matt glimpsed a jewellery box that had crashed to the ground, thousands of dollars' worth of precious gems scattered on the smooth asphalt like drops of rain.

Most of the vehicles were empty, of both possessions and people.

Some of them were not.

The first body they found belonged to a young woman. She lay sprawled on her stomach, half in and half out of her car, legs splayed crookedly on the ground, knees bent, almost like in the end she stopped to say a final prayer. Her long hair fell in a cascade of once meticulously styled waves, tangled now.

When John carefully turned her over, they saw her throat. What little was left of her throat.

Matt stepped back quickly, tried to close his eyes, to take back the last ten seconds, to _not remember_ that image ever. But it was already seared into his retina, boiling in his brain – the ragged gashes, the wet glint of bone and gristle, strips of skin hanging like raw meat from her long, graceful neck. The teeth marks. He stumbled over his own feet and found himself on his ass, hitting the concrete so hard that his teeth snapped together and his vision actually greyed out and he did that stupid thing that he always used to mock in bad TV movies – he slapped himself in the face. Clarity snapped back. He didn't pass out. He almost wishes he did.

The whole time John didn't move, didn't speak. He stood, staring at the lifeless body of the woman he held bonelessly in his arms.

Then he closed her eyes.

After that, John didn't stop to check any more bodies.

He dialled through the police band on autopilot, finding only static on every channel. He grit his teeth and tried again. And somehow he guided the car through the chaos on the bridge, through the snagged city streets until they ended up in midtown and there the tangle of vehicles was just too great. Here, rubble from downed buildings spills into the streets. Here, the bodies are more numerous, flung onto sidewalks and spread-eagled across trunks like rag dolls. None of these cars have any possessions in them.

John roots in the trunk for a gym bag, then they leave their vehicle behind and walk.

Matt tries to remember exactly how they got there. But his mind keeps going back to the dead girl, her eyes wide and frozen in fear, one single smear of blood on her pale cheek. And to that church in the middle of nowhere, that feeling of foreboding, of watching eyes.

The _chunk_ as John inserts a fresh cartridge into his gun brings him back to himself. He realizes that since that first dead body they've travelled without a word passed between them. His throat feels dry, cracked open, and he finds that he's actually loathe to be the first to speak, afraid that somehow by breaking the silence he'll make it all real.

God, the silence. Midtown Manhattan on an early Sunday evening heading toward dusk should be jam-packed with people. There should be sellers of knock-off designer purses with their folding tables; theatregoers rushing to meet the curtain; tourists, tourists, and more tourists. People – loud annoying crazy awesome people. But it is so quiet that Matt can hear his own footfalls on the cement, his own ragged breath.

He licks his lips, swipes a hand over burning eyes.

"John," he says.

He doesn't realize it, not then, but Matt's said the name the way someone else would say a prayer. Like John is someone who can save him.

The voice is like a pistol shot. John's head whips up, eyes wide, gun pointing unwaveringly in Matt's direction, and he has just enough time to pray that whatever happened to these people doesn't happen to John. It all happens in the space of a heartbeat and then John sees him, really sees him, and lowers the gun.

"Jesus, kid," he whispers, voice harsh and raw. "You're gonna give me a goddamn heart attack."

Matt takes a deep breath, feels it jagged in his throat, knife hard. He takes another, tries to calm his rapid-fire heartbeat. Tries to think past the haze in his brain.

"I don't—" he starts, gestures wide toward the avenue, taking in the crashed cars, the partially destroyed buildings, the scattered bodies. "John, what _happened_ here?"

In retrospect, it's the stupidest question in the history of the world. How could a city of millions – millions! – be reduced to _this_ in only one week? How could the destruction be so total? And sure, they were out in the middle of nowhere, but how could they not have _known_?

And the question that weighs most heavily on his mind: where are the rest of the bodies?

But John gives the question the weight it deserves, his own eyes drifting to the rubble-strewn streets, the scattered bodies of the dead. Matt sees his eyes hesitate over the lifeless form of a young girl clad in snug jeans and a floral tank top, her throat ripped out. Sees John's lips press in a thin line before he forces his eyes away.

"I don't know, kid," he says softly. He slams his gun back into the holster. "Come on."

"Terrorists?" Matt suggests tentatively. "Could this be—"

"I don't know."

"Some kind of… the government was doing a lot of chemical weapon testing. They tried to cover it up, but there were leaked documents, on the internet, there were—" He shakes his head. For all the knows, the internet is gone now. Except… No… that would be crazy. That would mean the destruction was… world-wide. And that's just not possible. That can't be possible. "Do you think this could be some kind of chemical weapon spill or—"

"I DON'T KNOW," John shouts, rounding on him. "I don't know SHIT, okay? I was in Crapsville Idaho talking about my goddamn motherfucking _feelings_ while the entire state went to hell in a hand basket and I don't fucking know what happened, all right? Does that make you happy? Will you shut your goddamn mouth about your theories for five fucking seconds, now?"

Matt blinks, rocks back on his feet. "Sure," he says shakily. "Okay, John."

For a long moment John just stares at him, hands clenched into fists at his sides, body a coiled spring. Like maybe he's daring Matt to keep talking. Because then that'd give him a reason to lash out again, and when you feel like you're in a pressure cooker, something's eventually got to blow. You _want_ it to blow. Matt gets it.

Then he gives a great shuddering breath, wipes a hand over his mouth. The fingers relax, uncurl. And when his hand reaches out it's not to swing at Matt but to wrap those strong fingers around his bicep, squeeze gently. He nods once, swallows convulsively, and then releases his grip. Straightens his shoulders before turning away, clambering over the partially fallen wall of a department store. "Come on," he says again.

And Matt's almost afraid to open his mouth again, but--

"Where are we going?" Matt calls to his retreating back. "Wait, McClane, we can't just—"

"1PP," John grunts over his shoulder. "Find out what's going on, where the relief efforts are centered. Then," he says, stopping to let Matt catch up, "we're going to find Lucy."

Lucy. Shiiiiit.

The last time he'd talked with Lucy had been on the phone, a week and a half ago. Matt remembers bitching about the upcoming retreat, whining that being trapped in the sticks with moose and bears was going to be bad but being trapped in the sticks with an antsy John McClane was going to be even worse. Lucy had laughed and told him to man up. Then she'd reminded him that at least her dad didn't bite. Unless Matt wanted him to.

Yeah, Lucy wasn't exactly _unaware_ of his feelings about her father. Even though Matt made sure never to confirm or deny. Apparently his silence was confirmation enough.

At the end of the conversation she'd told him that she was heading out to the coast later in the month, meeting up with Jack for a long-overdue visit with their mother. She was due to leave… tomorrow, actually.

Matt has never been one for prayer. He's not sure that he believes in a God that lets things like cancer and paedophilia and Rush Limbaugh exist. But for the second time in the day he sends up a quick prayer to whoever might be listening – that Lucy might have gotten tired of the city and headed out to California early. He doesn't ask for much, he thinks, but he can ask for this.

John is striding confidently ahead in the deepening gloom, and Matt tries to concentrate on his own feet, on just moving one foot in front of the other. If he raises his head, takes in the wide-scale destruction, he thinks he might just lose it, start babbling, start screaming _why_ and _how_ and pulling on his hair. So he just tries to avoid the cars arbitrarily blocking his path, makes sure to step over the occasional splayed arm, or sneakered foot, or crumpled torso. He has to think of them like this – body parts obstructing his way – and not people, not people who last week had parties to attend and work to bitch about and children to send to school and lives to live.

He is focussed so intently on the ground in front of him that he nearly walks into John's back when he stops short. He pulls up with his nose about an inch from John's spine, shakes his head and manages a mumbled "What are—" before John holds up his hand for silence.

Matt blinks, aware suddenly of how fast the night is beginning to fall. The sun is little but a hint of orange between the towering buildings. No light spills from the stores, no streetlights light the way, no neon signs flicker in the windows. And surrounding them, the buildings seem to close in on him, the weight of the stones pressing down on his head. The very air seems hushed, expectant.

Matt whips his head around toward the closest building, an Italian bistro with a broken picture window. He squints, tries to see past the overturned tables, but can see nothing in the shadows.

Yet he's suddenly sure that someone is there. Watching. Waiting.

A rattle of loose rock echoes from the street in front of them, and Matt whirls. At some point he's taken a couple of steps forward and he now stands side to side with McClane, close enough that he can feel the tension thrumming through John's body, feel the way the hairs on his arm are standing at attention. Another clatter of falling concrete from the shadows, and John slowly eases his hand into the gym bag flung over his shoulder, slides out the flashlight he must have snagged from his roadside emergency kit, and flicks it on.

The light seems excessively bright after the rapidly falling darkness, and as John shines its beam steadily over the crushed rock wall of a music store and the crumpled shell of the Lincoln town car that crashed there, Matt is struck with an almost overwhelming urge to grab his hand, to cover the light, to force him to sneak away, out of this block, out of this neighbourhood, out of this fucking city. He goes so far as to raise his hand toward the flashlight… and then the beam picks out the ragged form of a young man in the distance, stumbling across the rubble.

He's clad in a bright red-patterned T-shirt and jeans, high-tops filthy with concrete dust. Even at this distance Matt can see the way he cocks his head when the light flickers across his chest, hesitates for a moment and then takes another step forward, stepping carefully over the fractured concrete. Behind him, almost lost in the shadows, Matt can see others emerging from the broken and scarred buildings of Midtown: a man in a business suit, his shirt ripped at the collar; an elderly woman in a stained housedress; two boys in shorts. All pale and silent and coming inexorably their way.

Those without debris blocking their path almost seem to glide, effortless, like dancers.

Every instinct in his body is screaming at Matt to run away, but instead he finds himself fumbling for the flashlight that John shoves into his hand so he can free his own hand for his badge. He holds it up so that it shines in the dying light, and it is all Matt can do not to moan. Absolutely cannot take the cop out of the man. Jesus.

"Okay, folks," John says loudly. "Just stay calm. I'm a police officer."

The man in the lead hesitates slightly again before resuming his steady walk in their direction, the others behind him following relentlessly in his wake. Matt's aware of movement in the buildings all around them now, sliding footsteps shuffling through the debris, the ponderous click of heels on the pavement.

"John," he says quietly.

"We're gonna help you, get you someplace safe," John says.

"John."

Matt hasn't wanted to blind the guy by shining the light directly into his face, but he's at fifty feet and closing and still hasn't said a word, and he can feel others closing in behind them, cutting off their escape, and … and there was that church, that goddamn church, and the eyes that he felt watching, waiting…

He takes a breath, then flips up the light.

When the man hisses and snarls, they finally see the fangs.

The light skitters and bobs when Matt flinches back, and he has a confused impression of skin that is so pale as to be almost translucent, of malformed jaw, of bloodshot eyes buried in dark-rimmed sockets. When the thing – not a man, not a young man at all, but some hideous deformed thing – hisses again, Matt sees the blood that has dried on his lips, his jaw, that is caked into his matted hair and glues his formerly white T-shirt to his skin.

The thing takes another step forward, then another, moving faster now, and all Matt can do is stare, feet frozen in place, and now he can smell the stench of it, like rotting meat, like the dead cat he found in the garden behind the house when he was eight, and soon it's going to reach him, soon it's going to touch him and bite him and if he's lucky he'll be like that girl that they found by the car but if he's not, oh god if he's not, oh god oh god—

Matt lurches almost off his feet, feels his collar actually rip under John's hands as John tugs him back. The thing, the thing that used to be a man, reaches out and snarls and snaps its jaws into the air, into the space that Matt's body occupied only a second ago, and then John is pushing him forward, shoving him so hard that he almost loses his footing. Somehow full dark has fallen while they stood there, while their brains tried to process what their eyes were seeing, and Matt has no idea where the flashlight is, doesn't even remember dropping it. So he takes John's hand instead, or maybe John takes his, as they run. And all around them, the new denizens of the city emerge, and reach for them.

Within three blocks Matt's gasping, a stitch in his side. His mind flashes on all those times he tagged along when John went to the gym, ostensibly to join him in his work-out but actually to ogle John in the ratty old wife-beater that fit him like a second skin. John used to nag him then, about the treadmill and the elliptical, and he'd just straddle the bench and lift his puny little ten pound weight and laugh. And now, now he's probably going to be a nice little snack for a vam… for one of those things, all because he'd rather spend his time at the gym thinking about licking the sweat from John's neck instead of working on his goddamn _cardio_.

It's only when John shoots him a worried look that Matt realizes he's actually snickered out loud. And Christ, snickering is one step away from laughing and laughing is one step away from totally losing it and never stopping, and it's not like there's any nice padded mental wards to hide away in and embrace that fucking madness because hey, everybody's either dead or trying to kill you. And oh god he's got to stop thinking and his heart is going to explode out of his chest and--

Then one of the things darts out in front of them from a recessed doorway, teeth snapping, and Matt somehow finds that extra burst of adrenaline. John doesn't even break stride, just strong arms it into the brick wall and keeps running.

"Can you make it to the car?"

"The car?" Matt gasps out. If he could spare the time to shoot John an incredulous look, he would. "Are you fucking kidding?"

John gives him that appraising look, the one that he used to give when he was trying to decide if Matt's leg really did hurt as bad as he said or if Matt was just trying to shirk his exercises for the day. Matt wants to ask him how he can even pull off that look _now_. Everywhere, more and more of the… of the bloodsuckers are filing out from the buildings, staggering into the streets, hissing and snarling and reaching out for them. He wants to ask John is he really thinks he'd shirk now.

Instead, he tries. He digs a little deeper, does his best to ignore the burning in his calves and the rapid-fire beating of his heart. But in the end, he knows he's not going to make it.

"Okay," John says after they've travelled another two blocks, zig-zagging around crashed and abandoned vehicles, only narrowly avoiding the rapidly growing throngs of the creatures. "There."

It's a low-rise building, five or six stories, only a few of the things between them and the entranceway. John pulls his gun even as they run, darting around the creatures, avoiding jaws snapping in the air, fires at the glass of the lobby door and propels them both through in one motion.

Moonlight filters through the door and glitters on the shards of glass, but doesn't reach beyond the first five or six feet. Matt skids into the banister, rights himself and darts into the yawning blackness of the hallway.

"Matt!" John barks. "This way!"

Matt turns in time to see the bloodsucker emerge from the darkened vestibule behind John. This one was a woman, maybe in her early forties, stylishly cut short hair just beginning to show signs of grey. Her outstretched hand clamps on John's bicep like a vice, and in the filtered moonlight Matt can see her jaw stretch wide, her canines long and sharp and digging into her lower lip. John tries to turn, struggling in her grasp, but Matt can already see he's not going to be fast enough. Her grip is too strong, her head already bending to his neck.

Time seems to slow down. He spins back toward John as the woman lowers her head another inch, bends to grab the garbage can in the entranceway as she opens her jaw just a little wider. In the time it takes him to heft the can above his shoulders a drop of spittle falls from her open mouth, and when he swings he sees the small bead of moisture land on John's shoulder. Then the can is smashing into her side, advertisements and flyers fluttering everywhere, and the noise of it brings him back to himself. The impact flings both her and John into the banister, and it's enough to break her grip.

It's enough.

He shares a wild, half-crazed look with John and then they are pelting up the stairs.

There are more of the things in the apartments on the upper stories, gliding across the polished wood floors, shaking their heads like mad dogs and spitting at them as they dash past, taking the stairs two at a time. When they emerge onto the roof, Matt bends at his knees, gasping for breath, and it's only when he sees that John is still moving that he raises his head, watches him through the sweat-matted screen of his bangs.

John looks over the edge of the building, judges the drop. Then his eyes narrow as he studies the building across the alley.

"No," Matt says. "No way."

"We gotta jump it, Matt."

Matt always heard those people at the gym saying their limbs felt like wet noodles after a hard workout, but this is the first time he seriously _gets_ it. He is so tired that he's actually shaking; just taking a step seems like it would take a herculean effort. But he forces himself to walk to the edge. The gap between the buildings is easily six feet across. Maybe seven.

He steps back quickly, shakes his head. "Not a chance. Seriously, man, are you trying to kill me?"

"No," John says, "but those things are."

Okay, point to McClane. But seriously, six fucking feet. "We can stay here."

"They know we're here," John says. "They just have to follow us up the stairs, there's no fucking way to lock the door from this side. We can't hold here, kid. They spill out here, we got nowhere to run."

"But—"

"We jump to the next building. We stay behind the water tower. They come out over here, they can't see us. They can't get to us."

"Fucking hate it when you're logical," Matt mutters to himself. He paces back to the edge of the roof, forces himself to look down. Six storeys doesn't look like much until you're faced with the thought of plummeting from it to your death. Of course, it probably doesn't look like much to McClane at all – this is the guy who jumped off the roof of Nakatomi Tower wrapped only in a goddamn fire hose. Still…

"I don't… I don't think I can. I mean it, McClane. I'm not just being a pussy here. I seriously don't think—"

"You can," John says. He barely looks when he tosses the gym bag across the gap, and then he's backing up, he's running and jumping before Matt has time to open his mouth.

"Fuck," Matt mutters.

John lands easily on the other side. And goddamn it, the motherfucker is grinning. "Come on, Matty," he calls out. "You can do it."

"You're an asshole, McClane."

"That's what they tell me," John agrees.

Okay, Matt thinks. Okay. Six feet. Maybe seven. If it was a puddle on the ground, he could clear it without thinking twice. So clearly the best thing to do here is to think of the gap as a puddle on the ground. Just a puddle. Not a gaping chasm sixty-five feet above the ground. Right.

He back up, tries to ignore the shaking in his legs. He swipes his damp palms on the thighs of his jeans, takes a deep breath. Backs up to get a running start. On the other side of the gap he sees John tense, arms outstretched.

Just a puddle, he thinks.

"On the plus side?" Matt calls out. "If I don't make it, at least the fall is gonna kill me."

Then he is running, jumping, hair flying, arms pinwheeling across the distance, the wind ripping and pulling at his T-shirt. This time, time doesn’t slow down, it speeds up. And when he crashes into John on the other side, when John has wrapped his arms around him and has pulled him away from the edge and is clutching onto him, he feels that John is shaking, too.

Matt holds on for another long moment, fingers seizing spasmodically at John's shirt. "That," he says, "is officially the scariest fucking thing I've ever done."

"You did great, kid," John says into his hair.

Matt lets himself hold on for another moment before he lifts his head, shakes his hair out of his eyes. "Matty?" he says.

John just shrugs, grips him just a little bit tighter before letting go.

They make camp on the far side of the water tank. The wind has picked up and freezes the sweat to his skin. Matt's not sure if it's the temperature drop or the events of the day, but he can't seem to stop shaking. He takes little comfort in seeing that John doesn't look much better. So they stretch out on the blacktop together, sharing body warmth. They don't say much.

Matt never in a million years imagines that he'll get any sleep. But somehow, curled up against John McClane, he does.


	4. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

IV

"I've got an idea," Matt says.

John takes a final swig from their water bottle, eyes the amount of liquid left sloshing in the bottom of the bottle before holding it out to the kid. He waits until Matt's given a shake of his head before tucking it back amongst their meagre supplies. They're going to have to make a run into one of the little bodegas on the block for more provisions; they're going to need more water, for one thing, and something more to eat than the stale energy bars he'd had stashed in the emergency kit. Gonna have to find something sturdier than the battered gym bag to carry everything in, too – maybe a couple of backpacks to free up their hands, give them better ease of movement. They'll need to stock up, and for that they need a secure home base, something he hopes to find at the 1PP. And he needs more ammunition for the gun, as well. Hell, he's gonna need more _guns_ , full fucking stop.

John swipes a hand over his face. Too much to think about, too much to do, and behind it all the constant refrain of _Lucy Lucy Lucy_ that won't stop reverberating through his skull. His daughter's a tough one, Holly's told him so enough times, but this isn't some punk getting fresh on a date, this isn't walking across the campus at three in the morning because one of the roommates got hungry for a taquito from the local 7-Eleven. This is… fuck, this is Armageddon. And his baby is alone.

"McClane?"

He looks past Matt to the high-rise on the other side of the street. There's movement in one of the office blocks, someone passing compulsively in front of the window, four steps forward and four steps back. At this distance it's impossible to tell whether it's a survivor or one of the… others.

He shakes his head, forces himself to concentrate on the kid. Matt's looking at him with that same guileless expression that he awoke with this morning, the one that makes John's gut lurch and his chest get tight, the one that makes him wonder how the kid ever pulled anything over on anybody. The one that he'd worn after he'd sheepishly disentangled himself from John's arms and sat hunched over, silent, his knees drawn up to his chin, and watched the sunrise. John himself has seen too many sunrises to count, working twenty-four, sometimes forty-eight hours straight when a case was hot and an arrest was imminent. He knows that Matt is just as fanatical about his own work, staying awake on Red Bull and force of will, picking away at the gibberish on his computer screen until it works the way he wants it to work. He's sure Matt's seen his own fair share of sunrises. But Matt watches this one like it's different. Like maybe he's seeing the beauty in it for the first time.

John hadn't slept a wink the night before, but he was pretty sure that even after all they'd seen, Matt's sleep had been dreamless.

He blinks, pushes away the memory of how it had felt to hold Matt in his arms, the warmth of Matt's breath on his neck. He pushes away the foolishness of an old man, and tries to remember what Matt had said. Yes. "An idea," he prompts.

"Right," Matt says. "Okay, so don't jump down my throat or anything, but… I think we need to get in touch with the Warlock."

Jeeeeeeesus. His expression must have made his feelings about Freddie Kaludis perfectly clear, because Matt wrinkles his nose, waves his arms in the air.

"I know, okay?" Matt says. "But seriously, McClane, think about it. If anybody knows what happened, it's the Warlock. He'll be able to tell us about these things, these vamp—"

John holds up a hand to forestall the statement. "Don't say it, kid."

"Jesus, McClane, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck—"

They'd already had this conversation before, sitting on the rooftop in the dark and listening to the unremitting sound of footsteps on the pavement below, the occasional hisses and snarls of the people who were now… less than human. And fine, when he carefully lifted the sleeve of his shirt after Matt had drifted off to sleep and shone the flashlight beam on his arm, there were four very distinct bruises there – bruises in the shape of strong fingers that gripped like steel. He can still remember the putrid smell of that woman as she bent toward him, the stench of carrion on her breath. But despite all the evidence to the contrary, John isn't quite ready to go jumping into the supernatural well just yet, thank you very much.

"We don't know what they are," he says intractably.

"Okay, fine, whatever," Matt huffs out. "That's actually my _point_. We don't know shit, McClane. We don't know anything about the va… the bloodsuckers that attacked us, and we don't know how widespread this thing is. In fact, what we don't know could fill the fucking encyclopaedia brittanica, if anybody ever used those mouldy things anymore! And I'm telling you, McClane, I'm telling you, the Warlock will be dialled in to whatever happened here! What was the first thing you told me when I starting talking about joining the task force?"

"Matt--"

"Intel. The first thing any good investigation requires is accurate intel. That's what I'm good at, McClane. And trust me, Warlock is better."

John drops his head, studies the tar roof. The heat is already shimmering across the blacktop; the day is gonna be a scorcher. It'll be a long walk to the station, a walk that could be made even longer and more dangerous because of their lack of knowledge. So the kid has a point. But still, there is the constant chorus of _Lucy_ dancing in his brain. He raises his head, meets Matt's eyes. "We're not driving to fucking Baltimore, kid."

"We don't have to," Matt says triumphantly. "You remember, in the Warlock's command centre? He has a CB radio! It was his last ditch end of the world comm device, which, by the way, he totally got mocked about in every goddamn forum we went to but I guess he's got the last laugh now, right? Okay, sure, he thought it was going to be zombies instead of bloodsuckers, but he'll have it up and powered, McClane, I know he will! He had the frequency posted, it was… oh shiiiiit…"

"666," John says drily. For all that Kaludis is an overgrown punk with an attitude, he did come through last summer when it counted. John supposes he has to give him some kudos for that. "I remember, kid."

Matt smiles. "So all we have to do is find someplace around here that sells CBs, figure out how to set it up—"

John shakes his head, presses a hand down onto the hot tarmac to push himself to his feet with a grunt. He feels every ache and pain this morning, every old gunshot wound throbbing, every muscle he'd ever pulled in the field waking up to remind him that he's fifty-three years old with a lot of life behind him and that sleeping on a roof under the stars at his age is a Very Bad Idea. "When we were driving in yesterday I saw a tractor trailer jackknifed on the FDR," he tells Matt. "Trucker will have a CB."

Matt gets lithely to his own feet. Fucking youth. He cocks his head. "Are you sure? Trucks aren't allowed on the FDR."

John shrugs. "I'm thinking that when things went to shit people stopped paying attention to the rules, kid."

"Okay," Matt says. "Okay! So we just need to get there." His grin falters when he looks from John to the door that leads from the roof into the dark interior of the building, and John can see his throat move as he swallows convulsively. When he turns back, Matt is significantly paler and a hell of a lot less enthusiastic. "How exactly are we going to do that, McClane?"

* * *

McClane and his fucking plans.

Matt honestly thought that "find Lucy, kill everybody else" was the topper. But it turns out that "run down the stairs, go outside" actually wins for Worst Plan Ever.

He leans his head back against the accumulated coats and jackets in the closet, makes sure to keep his feet pressed firmly against the door. Part of him actually wants to put his hands up to cover his ears, but even if he did he'd still be able to hear the bloodsucker – fuck it, he'd still be able to hear the _vampire_ – growling and snuffling as it batters itself against the wood.

He swallows at a particularly loud thump, clutches his hand more firmly around the bent wire hanger in his fist. He's not exactly sure what he'll be able to do with it if the vamp manages to get the door open – poke it in the eye? Wrap it around the bloodsuckers throat and pull it tight? – but his improvised weapons of choice were either a wire hanger or several old copies of _Hustler_. And somehow he doesn't think he's going to stop a bloodsucker with a paper cut.

If he tells the truth, he doesn't think he's going to be able to stop it at all. And he hasn't heard any noise from McClane in the hall for a good five minutes.

Matt closes his eyes, tries to think of what they should have done differently. They'd opened the door on the roof silently enough. There was just enough room for John to stick his head through the opening, in and out, and to report that it was clear. John had taken the lead down the stairs, his gun out and held up at his side. A quick count of the doors showed them that there were seven apartments on each floor, and on the top floor two of the doors were wide open. The stairway itself looked clear.

John had nodded toward the lower stairs and nodded his head. At the same time, one of the vampires had stalked out from the open doorway on their left. The thing had seen them and lifted one hand in the air. Its overlong canines had seemed to glisten, and its lips had curled up in a mockery of a smile.

Then they'd run.

Maybe that was the mistake, Matt thinks now, eyes blinking open as the door gives a particularly vigorous shake. Maybe if they'd crept silently down the stairs, they'd be outside in the sunlight right now. But no, they'd panicked. They'd pounded down the stairs like bats out of hell, and sure that technique had worked the night before but this time, this time it sent every damn vampire in the building scurrying out onto the landings, each one snarling and spitting and---

With no rubble in the way to impede their progress, these things were _fast_.

He saw John go down under two of them that darted out of an open doorway on the third floor. Saw John stumble under the weight of them, saw his fingers whiten on the banister as he struggled to stay upright before the combined force of them sent him tumbling to the landing. Matt had jumped the last few stairs to clear the melee, had spun to grab at the closest vamp crouching over John when a third came gliding out of the door. He'd jumped back as it snagged at his shirt, clawed fingers scraping across his skin. And it was only the ripped collar of his shirt that saved him, the collar that John had ripped saving his ass the first time, the torn material ripping even further and slipping through the vampire's grasp, giving him time to dart back into the apartment it had come from, his breath a high-pitched whine in his ears. He'd dashed through the crowded living room to the bedroom, desperate and totally not even thinking, before he realized that he was completely cutting himself off from any chance of actual escape. He'd turned to go back the way he came but the vampire had followed, long stringy hair falling in her face but not obscuring the fangs, long and curved and god—

He's not even sure how he got into the closet.

He definitely heard McClane's gun go off once, the report sounding deafening in the small space; heard McClane's grunts and muttering mixed with the snarls and hisses of the vampires. And then nothing. Nothing for five long minutes.

But he imagines. Oh, he imagines a lot.

He imagines that beyond the relentless battering of the vampire at his door, he can hear… suckling noises from the hallway. The slow slurping draw of sucking at a thick milkshake, but worse. So much worse.

He imagines that he hears the slow lumber of John getting to his feet, the heavy stomp of John's boots on the scuffed wood floor as he crosses the apartment, as he approaches the bedroom, as he joins the female vampire in hammering at the closet door. He imagines he can see a thin crack starting in the old wood, and he clutches the hanger more tightly in his fist, opens his eyes wide and tries to confirm that it's just his imagination, except he's not sure if the small spider-web crack in the upper right hand corner was actually there when he first got into the closet or if it's new, and if it's new then he might be in deep shit trouble, and—

The vampire stops pounding on the door.

Matt holds his breath in the sudden silence.

Then the door is swinging open, McClane smiling down at him in his huddle of old coats.

"Whew," McClane breathes out. "You okay, kid? More of them than we thought, eh?"

"More of them than we—" Matt splutters out. He fights to extricate himself from the grimy pile of out-dated jackets and flimsy scarves, only realizes he's still got the hanger gripped tightly in his fist when McClane reaches out a hand to help him up. He drops it in the pile with a look of disgust, gets himself out of the closet without any damn assistance, and shoves a finger in McClane's chest. "You and your stupid plans! We almost died!"

John cocks his head, studies Matt in the murky gloom of the room. He grins. "You're all right."

"What? I am _not_ all—McClane? Did you shut the—"

"Door's locked," John says brusquely.

"Okay," Matt says. He forces his body to relax, slowly feels his hunched shoulders resume their normal position, and takes a breath. Only when he does a slow circle in place does he notice the body of the vampire on the floor, her upper half obscured by the end of the unmade bed. Part of him wants to round the bed, to roll the woman over, to find out what on earth John used to kill or disable her, to see if the legends are true. The other half of him figures he'll find out soon enough, and he really really doesn't want to puke right now. Energy bars are pretty disgusting anyway, and he's sure that they'd taste even worse coming back up.

"Okay," he says, once he's got his breathing back under control and has followed John to the living room, "how are we going to get the hell out of— oh. Okay. Right."

Light floods the tiny apartment when John pulls back the thick damask curtains to reveal the fire escape.

* * *

"This was a fucking waste of time."

John pushes away from the dashboard, flops back against the cracked vinyl seat of the cab.

It had been a trek of several hours through the seemingly deserted city to even get to the FDR, a trek in a broiling sun that felt like it belonged to the middle of August and not the tail end of June. He had insisted that they make several stops along the way, despite Matt's eagerness to get to the transport truck and test out his 'Warlock will have all the answers' theory. Most of the cars they came across in the city proper seemed as though their occupants had been taken unawares, set upon by the creatures of the night without any warning. But occasionally they found a vehicle packed to the brim with suitcases and home furnishings, sometimes with rolled up rugs fastened with bungee cords to the roof and sagging over shattered windows. John insisted that they stop and search every one of these, inwardly chomping at the bit himself at the time it took. Every time they veered from their course to root through open trunks and dig through someone's personal belongings, he felt the time ticking away in his head, getting away from him. At the rate they were going they wouldn't have time to make it to Police Plaza today, and that put him one day further away from searching for his baby, his Lucy.

 _Stay strong, stay safe_ , he thought silently. _I'll find you, Lucy._

But as a result of their raids, they both now had a pair of rugged, durable backpacks that set firmly on their backs, and a supply of canned goods that would last at least a couple of days. Matt had actually whooped aloud when he found a bunch of bananas, and they'd stood on the corner and had one each, cherishing the taste, knowing that they had no idea when they'd ever be able to eat a banana again. John had even come across a small hibachi barbeque in the back of an ancient and rusted out van, and had stuffed it precariously into the top of his pack. And most importantly, Matt was now carrying a baseball bat with a worn sandalwood grip.

The sight of Matt with a weapon was a reassuring one. John knows he won't soon forget the feeling of rushing into that cramped apartment, of hearing the spits and snarls from the creature who had Matt trapped and of not knowing whether the kid was alive or dead. He had reacted without thinking, his gun shoves back in its holster, had simply grabbed the thing by the hair and heaved it backward, hammered its forehead into the wrought iron bedrail several times until he heard a thick, syrupy _crunch_ and the creature went limp in his arms. He doesn't even remember tossing it down; he only remembers taking a breath and crossing to the closet door and knowing that if Matt came out at him with fingers crooked and goddamn _fangs_ , he was going to have to do the same thing to him.

What a relief to find the kid tangled up in coats and brandishing a hanger like a fucking sword.

It had been almost noon by the time they made it down to the jackknifed tractor trailer John had spotted the day before, and they'd spent the last half hour futilely trying to contact Freddie. All to no response.

They could have gone straight to 1PP. If there were any officers alive, anywhere at all, they'd know to go there. He could've loaded up on weaponry today, gotten intel from the survivors there. He could've been on the road to finding Lucy.

"Fucking waste of time," he says again. He pushes himself down off the high seat of the cab, bends his knees to take the brunt of the drop as he lands on the pavement, and stalks over to the nearby car where they'd propped their gear.

"No no no no," Matt says quickly. "McClane, wait!"

He hears the kid scrambling to follow, reluctantly slows to allow him to catch up.

"Okay," Matt says when he's reached the light blue sedan, waving his arms to get his attention. "Okay, just listen, all right?"

Like it's ever possible to ignore the damn kid when he wants to be heard.

"There's no way that Warlock can keep the CB on 24/7, right? He's gotta be draining power just to keep going, I mean, seriously McClane, there's no way he's sitting there with the lights out or anything, you know? He's gonna be running something for the fridge, too, the freezer, his mom is like really particular about her meat. She's got this thing about ground round that… whatever, not important. So the thing is, he's gonna be conserving power where and when he can. He's probably only powering up the radio every few hours, checking it at regular intervals, you know? I mean, isn't that what you'd do?"

John shifts to rest his aching hip on the car door, crosses his arms at his chest. It IS exactly what he would do. As the kid fucking well knows.

But Matt's still waiting, looking at him expectantly, so he gives a short, reluctant nod.

"Right," Matt says. "So we've just gotta keep trying, McClane. We'll try every half hour for the next few hours. He'll come through, I know it. Just don't give up yet. Please?"

The Lucy mantra is still ringing through his brain, but logically John knows that they won't have time to get to the precinct and do a thorough search today anyway. And Matt… Matt is looking at him with those big brown eyes, unblinking in the sunshine, and even if he was absolutely positively sure that Kaludis had fucked off to parts unknown he'd probably still agree to stay and try awhile longer, just to avoid seeing any disappointment there.

"All right, kid," he says, watches Matt puff up and let out a sigh of relief. He reaches behind him to the backpack, pulls out a couple of bottles of water and juts his chin toward the hood of the car. And if the action also covers the fact that he's grinning in response to Matt's obvious happiness at his reply, all the better.

John shifts against the car, turns so that he has a better view of the kid when he clambers up and sits cross-legged on the hot metal hood. He unscrews the lid from his bottle of water, takes a big gulp of the warm liquid, and John watches that, too – watches the way Matt's adam's apple moves when he swallows, the way his tongue darts out to lick at the drop of water that glistens on his lower lip. For a moment neither of them speak, and John shifts again, moves a little closer to Matt and follows his gaze to the slumbering city. From this distance, with the sun shining high in the sky, it almost looks the same. From here, it's easy to pretend that everything is okay.

"What's your favourite memory of New York?" Matt asks quietly from beside him.

John closes his eyes, the kaleidoscope of images flitting across his eyelids. He remembers his arm snug around Holly's waist, walking her home from the movies on their fourth or fifth date, the snow drifting down to melt on her long hair. He'd thought that it was like a scene from the movie they'd just watched, that soft romantic New York winter night, and he'd fully expected to kiss her good night on the stoop and be a gentleman and go home to his hand, and then she'd gone and propositioned him right there under the stars and suddenly it wasn't like any movie he'd ever seen at all. He remembers watching Lucy being born while a summer storm raged against the hospital windows. And the first time that Jack smiled at him and it wasn't gas or accidental, it was an honest to God grin. The pride in his mother's eyes when he graduated top of his class at the academy, and in Holly's when he made detective after only four years on the job. The pride he himself felt in his city, his people, after the tragedy of 9-11.

And then, strangely, an image of Matt from a few months ago. They'd been walking back to the car after dinner at Napoli's, the cold of winter still nipping at their heels but the promise of spring just around the corner. There'd been a light, late snowfall while they sat inside the warm little restaurant, lingering over tiramisu and talking, and it had slicked the streets enough that they'd slipped and slid their way to the car. He doesn't remember what he said that made Matt laugh, but he remembers the surge that he got from hearing it. Remembers Matt laughing so hard that tears ran down his cheeks, and how Matt's laughter was infectious and he couldn't help laughing too. He remembers tugging on the lapel of Matt's jacket to get him to keep moving forward, Mats staggering against him, and how right it felt with Matt's body pressed against his. He remembers wanting, wishing for more… and Matt's eyes, bright in the moonlight, and seemingly only for him.

He opens his eyes, sees Matt watching him now. He clears his throat. "I'm New York born and bred, kid," he says. "Too many memories."

He thinks that Matt will dig for details, want specifics, but the kid just nods. So John hikes himself up on the hood of the car, takes a swig of his own water. "What about you?"

"Me?" Matt says. "Until last summer I'd only ever been to the city once."

"You're kidding," John says flatly.

"Well, it was far—"

"You lived in Jersey!"

"Actually," Matt points out, "I grew up in Connecticut. Which," he adds before John can open his mouth, "I know, is also not that far away. And my dad commuted every day, so it's not like we couldn't have--" He sighs, and John wonders what memory is being unearthed there, what moment from his childhood Matt is thinking about and considering and then pushing away under the surface.

"Anyway," Matt continues after a moment, "the one time I visited New York before you practically kidnapped me and we went on the road trip from hell was when my mom took me to this expo. I don't even know what it was for. I think maybe it was devices of the future or… no, it was something to do with the space program, because I was really into space and astronauts for ages—"

"Wait," John interrupts. "Are you telling me that you and Freddie really met at _space camp_?"

"Well… yeah."

"Jesus, kid, you're a bigger geek than I thought."

"I'm going to take that as the compliment that I'm sure you intended it as, McClane," Matt says with a mock scowl. "Do you want to hear this story or not?"

When he first met Matthew Farrell, the insistent chatter was annoying as fuck. After a time it became acceptable, then… strangely soothing, as was the fact that Matt listens as intently and earnestly as he talks. And he may not understand all of Matt's passions – truth be told, anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the things Matt says go completely over his head – but his enthusiasm for them is endearing. Matt's eyes light up and his hands scissor the air, and the entire effect is both invigorating and exhausting. So he waves a hand airily for Matt to continue.

"So we went to this expo, and we walked around, and I remember being like super tired and bored and I just wanted to go home."

"This does not sound like a favourite memory, kid."

"Then," Matt says pointedly, "we came across someone giving a software demonstration."

"Aaah."

"Right? So this dude is up there, all pompous, showing what his little program could do, and I could immediately see how it could be modified to do so much more, you know? Soooo I climbed up on the dias. Everybody laughed, oh ha ha, look at the little kid, isn't he cute… until I clicked through to the guys files and started altering the program."

John is surprised to find himself laughing, surprised to find that he can still laugh after all that's happened. "How old were you?"

Matt shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe seven?"

John whistles. "Jesus, kid, you were a fucking prodigy."

Matt uncrosses his legs, draws his knee up and fiddles with the lace on his running shoe. "After that, my mom kept… she put me in little league, and the boy scouts, and even the 4F club. The 4F club! Can you imagine me taking care of cows, McClane? Like that wasn't a recipe for disaster. Anyway, I knew what I wanted to do. Once I saw that demo, I was hooked."

Occasionally, when Matt shares these little tidbits about his past, even – or especially – when John has to read between the lines, he is overcome with the desire to hop in the car and head out to Head Stuck Up Your Ass, Connecticut. He just wants to shake some sense into Matt's parents, who didn't have the good sense to realize just what kind of kid they had, and who seemed instead to do their utmost to fuck him up. John knows he may never have been the ideal parent, and he sure as hell wasn't going to win any Number One Dad awards, but he had always encouraged his kids dreams.

He leans across the space between them, nudges Matt with his shoulder. "I'm sorry she didn't support you, kid."

Matt looks up then, shakes his long bangs out of his eyes. "It's okay," he says. "I mean, what other kid knows what he wants to do for the rest of his life when he's seven, right? I had it good."

"Yeah," John says.

And looking into Matt's eyes, he realizes suddenly that not all dreams end at childhood. We still dream as adults, even though it gets a lot harder. And some of those dreams are about believing in something even though you know the chances of it coming true are pretty damned remote. He looks at his watch, raises an eyebrow at the time. "C'mon, Matt," he says. "Let's give Freddie another try."


	5. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

V

"This is Farrell calling Warlock. Farrell calling Warlock. Do you read? Over."

John presses his lips together, stares out the dirty windshield. Beside him, he can feel Matt's body tense, thrumming, knows his shoulders are hunched as he stares at the blank face of the CB, like maybe he can will it to speak just by refusing to look away. But they've been trying to reach Freddie for three hours, three long hours, and there is no response, no answering static, no white noise. The radio may as well be dead, like the rest of the fucking city.

John himself gave up on getting any kind of answer an hour ago, and he's been avoiding looking into Matt's eyes ever since. He doesn't want to see the hope there. He doesn't want to crush it.

He doesn't want to, but soon he will have to.

The cracked vinyl seat creaks as Matt leans back, and John does look at him then. His eyes are closed, the microphone still held in a loose grip. John's gaze flicks back to the CB – _c'mon Freddie, you wiseass piece of shit_ – but his will is no stronger than the kid's. And when he raises his eyes back to Matt's face, Matt is watching him.

He opens his mouth to tell Matt that it's time. They gave it their best shot, but now they've got to start the long haul back to the city, get back to the roof or find another safe place to hole up before the sun goes down. He opens his mouth to say all these things, but all that comes out is "Matt" before his throat closes up and he has to look away again.

"I know," Matt says, as if he heard it all anyway. Another crackle from the vinyl as Matt leans forward in the seat, and John turns enough to see that Matt is hanging the mic back up on the stand, putting everything back the way they found it.

"It's just… if anybody was going to make it through this, I figured it would be the Warlock," Matt continues. His voice cracks on the name, and John glances up to see the pin-pricks of tears in his eyes. Matt blinks, raises a hand to brush them away unashamedly. He takes a deep breath, the exhale harsh and shaky. "I know you didn't like him, but—"

John shakes his head, huffs out his own breath. Not because it isn't true – he made no compunction about letting Matt know that he thought his best friend was a self-absorbed arrogant asshole wiseass with a chip on his shoulder, and that any forty year old man still living in his mother's basement might as well just get 'loser' tattooed on his fat ass and get it over with – but none of that matters. None of that means that he'd want to see the guy hurt, or missing, or dead. Dead… or something worse. None of that means he'd want to see Matt hurt from the pain of losing him, the pain of not knowing.

"--but he's always been there, whenever I needed him," Matt continues. "He's been a part of my life for practically as long as I can remember. And, sure, the dude could be an annoying pain in the ass, and he was a complete prick about his gear and he'd never put his shit on open source and he had this weird borderline fanatical obsession with Luke Skywalker—"

"This is turning out to be some eulogy, kid," John says wryly.

Matt looks over at him then, manages a watery smile. "Remember last Christmas, when those… um… anatomically correct gingerbread men kept getting delivered to you at the precinct?"

"Jeeeeesus, Lambert was still harassing me about that in Febru—" John stops. "Wait, are you telling me that was—"

"Yup," Matt says.

Those gingerbread men had set off a chain reaction of food-with-dicks showing up at his desk that had lasted for _weeks_. One day is was a rum-ball Santa with a very long licorice addition (and two smaller rum-ball additions.) The next, a reindeer made of ju-jubes with a very prominent candy cane appendage. And just when he thought it was over, that the guys would finally forget, another shipment of gingerbread men would show up and the process would start all over again.

John whistles through his teeth. "That little shit."

"Yup," Matt says again. He grins, just a little, and takes another deep breath. "I'm going to miss him," he says quietly before sitting up straighter, deliberately squaring his shoulders. "I just hope he went out swinging."

John glances unobtrusively at his watch, steals another glance through the grimy windshield. The sun is still high in the sky, many hours of daylight left, but if they can't find someplace safer to stay than the roof he wanted to find something to use to lock the access door, and he's starting to feel like he shouldn't wait for their trip to One Police Plaza for more cartridges and the nearest gun shop he can think of is close to Chinatown and there are a hundred other things to think about—

"Listen, kid," he finds himself saying anyway. "We can stick around for another hour. Try again."

For a brief moment he sees rekindled hope in Matt's eyes, right before he shakes his head. "No. Thanks, but I think we should—"

"Farrell. I'm on 66.6. Pick up if you're there."

For a long moment that seems to stretch forever they simply stare at each other. Matt's mouth has dropped open in shock, and John's pretty sure he looks the same way. Then Matt lets out a _whoop_ , an actual _whoop_ , and they are both diving for the mic, fingers tangling together as they each try to snatch it up. It's Matt who emerges triumphant, the grin splitting his face, instantly stripping away a half-dozen of his twenty-something years to turn him into a kid again, and he smashes his thumb on the call button so hard that John thinks he's probably going to be bruised the next day.

"Warlock!" he yells into the mic. "I'm here!"

"Hallelujah," Warlock's voice crashes through the cab, his voice a slow easy drawl, "he picks up. I've been sitting on the roof in front of this box sweating my fat ass off for five fucking days, man. Where the hell have you been?"

"We just got back oh my god I thought you were dead we've been trying to reach you for hours," Matt says in one giant whoosh of breath. "We started seeing wrecks on the interstate, and when we got into the city it was deserted, at least we thought it was deserted, and—"

John realizes he's been staring at the radio, as if he can see Warlock through the plastic and metal, and he only looks up when Matt stops talking and releases the button to rub a shaky hand over his face. The kid looks spent, like he's only just now seeing exactly how much shit they have been dropped into, but before John can make a move for the mic Warlock has already taken up the slack.

"Right," he says smoothly. "You were away at the love-in with the cop."

Matt sits up a little straighter at that, flicks him a glance that John can't read before raising the microphone hurriedly to his mouth. "It wasn't a… it was just a new-age workshop with… there wasn't any… look, it doesn't matter, okay? We got back here and everything's gone to shit and we need to know happened."

"What happened? You're asking me what happened? Look around you, dude! It's the end of the world as we know it. And I'll tell you another thing, I most definitely do not feel fine."

"Warlock—"

"It's the eve of destruction, Barry Maguire had it right the whole time. It's—"

John huffs out a frustrated breath, grabs the mic from Matt's hand before he can let out more than an aborted squeak. He thumbs the button quickly, leans so close that his lips actually brush the grimy surface. "Listen to me, you little shit," he says, "you're going to tell us—"

And then Matt has grabbed the mic away, is shooting him a dirty look that he completely doesn't deserve, and before he can snatch it back the speaker gives out a squeal of feedback that resolves itself into Warlock's sardonic drawl.

"Oh, the cop's there," Warlock says. "Guess we can all just pack up and go home now. McClane's back, he'll take care of everything."

John makes another stab for the mic, but Matt pulls it back out of his reach, lifts his other hand palm up like a traffic cop. "Look," he hisses, "just… let me handle this, okay? In case you haven't noticed, McClane, the Warlock doesn't like cops and he particularly doesn't like you."

"Trust me, kid, the feeling's mutual," John says. He glares at the kid, the frustration and anger still cresting within in him, rising like a wave – they're not learning shit except how much Freddie Kaludis likes the sound of his own fucking voice, with every minute that they sit here they lose another bit of the day, they have shelter to find and Lucy is still out there alone, his Lucy. He wants to lash out – at Matt, at some computer geek smartass a couple of hundred miles away, at whatever's fucking handy. Anything to not feel so goddamn helpless.

With an effort he pushes the feeling down. Nods curtly toward the mic clutched protectively in Matt's fist.

The kid eyes him a little warily, but lifts the mic back to his face. "Okay," he says slowly. "Warlock, that's… you know, that's fine and all, but we need actual information here, man. We got back into the city and some of the buildings, they look like they've been bombed out. And everything's deserted, except at night when.. well, this is going to sound nuts, I mean this is going to sound call the men in the white coats loony, but at night there's these… the people are… I think they're vampires, dude."

"They're not vampires," John mutters.

"They're not vampires," Warlock says.

John can't help but shoot a triumphant look Matt's way.

"At least," Warlock continues, "not in the way that we think. Look, you take a little bit of the vampire legend, but not the Bela Lugosi shit, most of that is totally bogus. Mix in some of the Rage bug from _28 Days Later_ , add in a smidge of the croatoan virus. Hell, toss a bit of the Will Smith version of _I Am Legend_ in there while you're at it. Toss that all up and you got yourself our End Of The World salad. Croutons extra."

Matt leans back in the seat, his mouth slack, the microphone limp in his hands. John hesitates a moment before lifting it out of his grip, but Matt only rolls his head on the seat, stares at him with those big dark eyes. John's seen Matt scared… hell, he's seen the kid fucking terrified… but he's never seen that cold look of dread. John takes a deep breath before he thumbs the button. "Freddie," he grits into the mic, "what the fuck are you talking about?"

"The cop isn't big on the pop culture references. Now there's a shocker," Warlock drawls. "Okay, listen up. The vast majority of what you think you know about vampires you can toss out the window. Garlic doesn't repel them, they can cross running water just fine, and they could bed down in a bed of fucking roses. And you don't need no speciality department ash stakes to take them out. These fuckers are human. You shoot 'em or stab 'em, they die. You cut off an arm, they bleed out and die. But the legends got two major things right, okay? First, they're extremely sensitive to sunlight. More than a minute or two in the sun and these cats turns into crispy critters, you dig? Major photophobia. And second? They want blood."

It's a moment before John can get his throat to work. Finally he thumbs the button. "What do you mean?"

"They need blood. It's a pretty simple concept. They drink blood, dude. Hell, you say you're in the city, then you've seen it. They want it, and if they drain you without ripping your throat out in the process you better start wearing SPF forty thousand sunscreen and you definitely need to see a dentist."

John lets the microphone dangle in his lap, jerks when Matt leans forward in the seat. He's always prided himself on his ability to take things at face value, roll with the punches, do what needs to be done. But this… this is…

"This is crazy," Matt says.

"You took the words right outta my mouth, kid."

"You think maybe somebody slipped something into the water back at the camp and we're just having a mass hallucination?"

John tries to smile, but it feels more like a grimace. The proof is all around them, much as he'd like to pretend it isn't. The city is a goddamn graveyard, and Freddie can say these people are 'human' all he wants, but he also said the creatures drain their victims of blood. Not weaken, _drain_. And that means the things that walk at night, the things that followed them through the streets snarling and snapping, are not sick people. They are cadavers. Walking dead.

Spelling it all out in his head doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

"I guess it's a lot to take in," Warlock says over the speaker. "Sorry, guys."

The mic feels heavy as John lifts it to his face, and his voice sounds low and shocked and strained to his ears. "How did this happen?"

"Seriously, McClane, who the hell do you think I am, fucking Kreskin?" Warlock snarks. "I don't know, okay? Could be residual effects from the chemtrails, could be sun spots, could be global warming, could be fucking alien spores from the planet Vulcan! Pick a theory, dude!"

John doesn't realize that his fingers have curled crushingly around the mic until Matt's fingers brush lightly against his. He releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, raises his eyes to Matt's. He wouldn't say that the stunned, shocked look is gone – he's pretty sure he's wearing the match to Matt's current expression on his own face – but Matt looks like he's back in the game. Matt is like him in one very clear way, after all: he likes straight lines. Cause and effect.

He forces his hand to open and Matt takes the mic, lifts it to his lips. "Warlock," he says.

For a long moment there is only silence on the line. Then a sigh comes from the speakers.

"There was a rumour," Warlock says. "Unsubstantiated, but from a reliable source. Apparently a vial of highly sensitive chemical agent was stolen from a government think tank in upstate New York."

"When?"

"Thirteen days ago."

Matt immediately shakes his head, jabs his thumb on the button. "Too soon."

"Think about it, Farrell," Warlock says insistently. "Say you got one infectee who bites ten people the first night, sucks 'em dry. On the second night those ten go out and bite ten more, now you've got a hundred bloodsuckers. Maybe a few of them get caught, sure, but something like that ends up in the Enquirer, not the evening news, plus nobody knows what they're dealing with so they don't know how to handle it. Say ninety of them go out on night three and they each infect ten more, assuming a rate of infection that remains constant and even allowing for a mortality rate of ten or fifteen percent among the victims, you've still got—"

"Holy shit," Matt breathes.

"It was essentially over by the fifth night," Warlock says. "They were a wave, man. They crushed us."

John leans forward, nudges a numb Matt to thumb down the mic. "What about the police," he asks. "Hell, what about the goddamn army?"

"Weren't you listening, dude? Nobody saw it coming, and if anybody did, who the hell would believe them? By the time somebody was ready to push the panic button and call in help, it was too fucking late. They'd already spread halfway across the country! Before they cut all communications, for our own good—" John can almost see the air-quotes – "there were a few aerial shots of the blasts in New York. Dude, Flushing and Astoria are _gone_ , practically wiped off the fucking map."

"What about—" John has to stop then, his throat dry. He stares out the windshield, fights for control. Not just New York, then. All of it. That means Jack, in his freshman year at CU-Boulder; it means Holly in her sprawling ranch house in Los Angeles. It means his mother in Florida. He's aware of Matt sitting quietly beside him, not moving, just holding the mic, ready when John is ready, a steady presence at his side. He swallows once, roughly, jerks a nod toward Matt and takes the microphone back. "What about our allies?" he asks, proud that his voice is steady.

"No," Warlock says shortly.

"No?" John repeats incredulously. "What the fuck do you mean, no?"

"Look," Warlock says with a sigh, "the power's been out for days, man, and even when it wasn't the government had already blocked all broadcasts and comm links, including cellular, including the old satcomms, and no, Farrell, before you ask I don't how they did it."

John steals a glance at Matt, who slowly closes his mouth. The kid's cell phone had been left behind at his little walk-up in Brooklyn per the rules of the retreat, and he knew Matt had been itching for it all week. He can't help but wonder if they'd have had an inkling that something was happening if Matt had had his phone and found it incapacitated. If they'd have thought enough of it to leave the retreat and head back to the city early. If they'd have gotten there in time to do something, to get to Lucy, to somehow change things.

John drops his eyes. What If's don't help them now, don't help Lucy now. He focuses on the speaker.

"Now for your normal dude," Warlock is saying, "that would be enough to cut us off completely, but I ain't your normal dude. I got a program, kick ass piece of coding, it's genius, but the thing is it eats power, man, eats it for dinner, and I can only afford to run it for like five minutes a day or I risk sacrificing the entire mainframe. Anyway, I try to surf through as many of the channels as I can and…"

Warlock takes a deep, shuddering breath, and John realizes that behind all the bluster and bravado the man is scared shitless.

"London's on fire, man. There's not a section of that city that's not burning. Hell, yesterday the _Thames_ was on fire. And Berlin… Berlin's just gone. Not like Astoria-gone, I mean wiped out. My best estimate is they dropped at least three medium-sized nukes on the city." Warlock sighs heavily. "Help isn't coming, McClane. We're on our own."

"Feels fucking familiar," John mutters before he tosses the mic into Matt's lap. He watches dully as the kid absently picks it up, long fingers turning it over and over in his hands.

A virus that turns people into bloodsuckers. The deaths of millions. World-wide destruction.

The end of the world.

"Look," Matt says finally into the silence, "this doesn't change anything. We still have to get somewhere safe tonight—"

"Yo, McClane," Warlock's voice barks from the speaker.

Matt thumbs the button down distractedly, mumbles "Warlock, hang on for one second" before releasing his hold, turning his attention back to John. "There could still be survivors like you said, cops at the precinct, that's where they'd go, right? We've still got to check—"

"Farrell!"

Matt smashes his thumb into the mic. "Just give me one fucking second, jesus christ," he barks out, "—and we've still got to find Lucy, man. Nothing's changed."

"Oh shit," Warlock's voice says softly from the speaker. "His daughter. I… I might have some intel there."

John lifts his head, sits up slowly, and when he reaches for the mic he sees Matt actually flinch at whatever he sees in his face. All John knows is that the world has narrowed down to himself and some overweight, pompous hacker jerkoff, and if he doesn't get the answers he wants he _will_ be taking a trip to Maryland. He takes a breath, depresses the send button carefully. "What," he asks slowly, "do you know about my daughter?"

In the pause before Warlock answers, John can feel his own body thrumming.

"Before everything went to shit," Warlock says, "I used remote access to turn on the GPS tracking device on her cell phone."

"And?" John says softly.

"And they fried the system three days ago, dude! But listen, I kept track of her until then, as best I could using my limited resources, I mean just keeping everything up and running is a huge drain on the—"

"Freddie!"

"Right," Warlock says quickly. "She was staying in the same general six block radius for the first few days, but right before they blew the fuses the signal went static. At that point she was on Courtland, off Canal. Chinatown."

John leans back in his seat, scrubs a hand over his jaw. Chinatown. He could be there in fifteen minutes in a car, if the roads were good – which of course they're not. Maybe a few hours at a jog if he left right now. There is nothing he wants to do more. He eyes the sun, side-glances Matt sitting oh-so-still beside him. Matt drops his eyes, but the kid's as transparent as saran wrap, and it's pretty damn clear that Matt knows exactly what he's thinking. And he knows the kid would let him go, too. Even if it meant… well, no matter what it meant.

Scalvino reads him the riot act often enough for jumping in with both feet, thinks that John doesn't think through the consequences of his actions. What he doesn't realize – what Cobb never realized either, or Delvecchio before him – is that John does think about the consequences, he just doesn't put as big a price on them as his superiors do. Or as he once told Inspector Cobb: he gives a shit, just not the same stinking pile of horse shit that Cobb gives.

That got him a unscheduled week off. And hadn't Holly been so pleased.

The consequences are bigger now. He can't go off half-cocked, throwing a makeshift bomb down an elevator shaft or a car into a helicopter and dealing with the fallout later. He's gotta start at Point A and work to Point B, and if Point B doesn't work then move to Point C. Straight lines.

And he's got someone else counting on him now.

He lets out a deep breath and thumbs the button on the mic. "Thanks, Freddie," he says. His throat moves convulsively, and he clenches the microphone tight. "Warlock," he grits out.

"Hey," Warlock says. "Glad I could help, dude. I happen to like your daughter. It's not her fault her father is an asshole."

John manages a small smile before he tosses the mic back to Matt, reaches out to squeeze his shoulder before he presses a hand against the seat and prepares to lever himself out of the cab of the truck. "Wrap this up," he says. "We gotta find a place to hole up before the sun sets."

Yeah, Matt would've let him walk away, probably wouldn't even have tried to talk him out of it, but he still sees the kid's stifled sigh of relief when Matt realizes he's not going to do it. He hops down onto the sun-baked concrete as Matt tells Freddie – Warlock, he thinks, he should try to think of the fucker as Warlock from now on – that they're on the move.

"Your unit portable?" Warlock asks.

Matt glances down at John, and together they stare at the complex confusion of wires under the dash. John makes a face.

"I could figure it out," Matt says, but he still thumbs the mic and answers, "Not right now."

"Okay, there's a couple of things you need to know before you go. On solid ground these bloodsuckers are fast and agile, but they get awkward on stairs. Get yourself up on high ground, and cut off the access to the stairs. And get yourself a portable unit, something you can move to your base camp. We've got a system set up for comm times and you want to get on the rotation as soon as possible."

John lifts a brow. "We?"

Matt's expression is equally surprised as he opens up the channel. "You mean there's others?"

"Of course there's others! What, you think you're special, Farrell? I got a group up in Syracuse, a mom and her kid in Hanover, another couple of cats in Maine living in luxury on the top floor of a department store. Right now we're just sharing information, keeping an eye out in case this thing mutates, but eventually we're all going to have to come together in one place. Jury's still out on where."

John leaves Matt to work out the details for their next call, strides to the blue sedan and grabs a water bottle out of his pack before he hitches it onto his back. He's thinking about Point A – shelter – and how it will lead to Point B.

He's definitely not thinking about what might happen if this damn fucking virus mutates.

* * *

"John," Matt shouts, "when the Warlock said to cut off all access to the stairs, I don't think he meant literally!"

John waits until the final section of the banister has clattered to the floor below them before turning off the chainsaw. He sits back on his haunches, waves a hand and coughs through the plumes of diesel smoke choking the air. Then he smiles proudly down at his handiwork. "Gets the job done," he says.

He stifles a groan and side-glances Matt as he pulls himself to his feet. The kid is shaking his head with that _oh look, McClane's doing something crazy again_ look that he remembers very well from the Fourth, but he's also looking kind of impressed as well, an expression that John also remembers from the ridiculous Independence Day weekend.

John sets the chainsaw well back from the drop before stepping carefully to the edge. He's left the top two steps of the staircase intact, but the remainder of them now lay in a heap of broken wood and old nails in the foyer of the old house. He's sweaty, he's tired, his shoulder hurts like a motherfucker – and he feels alive for the first time since they got back to the goddamn city. It's all he can do not to let loose with a roar.

With this final modification, the little house feels safe.

They'd been cutting across an overgrown patch of grass that had the temerity to call itself a park, in the midst of arguing about where to spend the night, when Matt spotted it. The kid had literally done a double-take, and John could understand why. He'd thought that any of the original homes that once dotted Manhattan in such profusion had long ago been razed to make way for the high-rises and condos and upscale businesses that lined Midtown.

"Unbelievable," Matt had said.

John had been busy scanning the area around the little bungalow. The building on its left easily stretched for forty storeys, it's foundation some kind of new-age hippy-dippy yoghurt bar topped with office space. The one of the right offered a fitness studio that took up three or four floors and also offered another twenty floors of office space. The bungalow would never see the damn sun. He didn't know why anyone would ever want to live there.

"Do you know what this means, John?" Matt had said excitedly. "Do you know how much pressure would have been exerted on these people to sell out? But they didn't do it! They held on to their property because… because they loved it, because… it wasn't just a house to them, it was a home! And they told the fascist developers and mudsucking corporate lawyers to kiss their ass! That is… I can't even believe it. It's incredible."

In the bustling city of Manhattan that existed no more, living here would have been a nightmare. But in the Manhattan that now exists, it was a godsend. "Yeah, kid," he had agreed. "It's also our new home."

And now it was safe.

John grins over at Matt, gets another head shake with a roll of the eyes thrown in for good measure. Then Matt glances at the fast-dying daylight that somehow manages to leak through the frosted glass front door before he pads off down the hallway. Not that he has far to go. It's only two steps from the head of the stairs to the miniscule bathroom with its pedestal sink, rusty toilet, and claw-foot tub. It's double the distance to the room where he is headed, the only other living space on the second floor, a cramped little room with a peaked ceiling that the owners – wherever they may now be, and John takes a moment to offer up a little prayer that they were one of the ones able to make it out of Manhattan – were using as an office. The desk that had dominated the tiny space has been shoved into the hallway to make room for the mattress that he and Matt had dragged up the stairs.

And now with the only access to the second story literally in pieces, John felt that he could finally relax. Take a breath without worrying for two goddamn seconds.

Of course, they were going to be living on top of each other. And they'd have to find something bigger once he'd found Lucy.

He shakes his head, tries to push thoughts of his daughter away, to focus on straight lines. Point A to Point B to Point C. Point A – shelter, safe and dry – has been accomplished. Which leads directly to Point B – getting a decent rest before tackling Point C, the long walk to One Police Plaza for supplies, ammunition, and hopefully more survivors. More information. After that, Lucy. That is as far as his planning goes. He will find his daughter. Not finding her is not an option.

He does a final visual before padding off himself to the bathroom, strips off his now-filthy T-shirt and makes a mental note to add "finding new clothes" to the To Do List. An addendum to Point C, perhaps. It's only when John is standing at the sink, watching his own reflection performing the same mundane task of washing-up that he's performed thousands of time in the past, that it hits him suddenly, finally.

Everyone is gone. Either dead, or infected by some ridiculous sci-fi virus that kills and then reanimates people into bloodsuckers. There are dozens, hundreds of little decisions that need to be made, actions to be taken that will lead to further actions. There is no government, no help coming, no one to swoop in at the last minute to save the day. And there is sure as hell no God, because he can't believe any loving God would let this happen to his creation.

There is only him. Just John McClane. And one high-strung motor-mouthed mop-haired computer geek who's counting on him.

His can feel the edges of the sink dig into his fingers as he stares at his reflection. He feels old. Old and worn out, the lines of a lot of years of rough living etched into his face even though the eyes are still clear and sharp. The scar from Gabriel's bullet is just the most recent in a litany of them, and his body aches with what he put it through last night and today. But there will be no respite in the coming weeks. Or months. Hell, years.

He doesn't know if he can do it. He only knows that he has to.

With an effort he forces himself to stand straighter, releases his white-knuckled grip on the sink. Forces himself to remember that the weeks will take care of themselves. For now, there is only tonight. And they are safe. He can get through tonight.

Then he reaches the bedroom, still towelling off his chest, and wonders if he can.

Matt has shrugged out of his own grimy shirt and is sprawled out on the bed, and John discovers he was wrong about the little house not getting any light. The skylight above the bed lets in a thick wedge of moonlight which falls on Matt's pale skin like a beacon, accentuating the long lean lines of him and transforms his hair into a dark halo. John's hand stills on his chest, the towel unnoticed, and when Matt's head turns slowly on the pillow and Matt looks at him, just looks at him, he feels a stirring in his groin that matches the clenching of his heart.

Then Matt blinks. "Oh, I didn't mean to—" he starts softly.

He shakes his head, and John never finds out what he never meant to because Matt looks away then, and John just watches the play of light on the planes of his back and the way the wiry muscles move under his skin when he raises an arm to swipe at his unruly hair. He watches the way Matt's ministrations cause his hair to stick out in a dozen different directions, and his fingers twitch with the urge to smooth it down. He watches the shell of Matt's ear, and the way the hairs there curl around the lobe no matter what does, and he wants to… he wants…

"Wow, I really zoned out for a second there," Matt says when he turns back, and John blinks, swallows around a suddenly dry throat. "I was just resting, McClane, you should totally have the bed."

When he moves to get up it breaks John's paralysis too, and he turns to drape the towel on the doorknob, rests his hand there a second before turning back to the kid. "Stay," he says brusquely. "I'll take the floor."

"Yeah, like I didn't hear you grunting every time you moved today? C'mon, McClane, you sound like one of those Olympic weightlifters going for the three hundred and fifty pound lift. All you need is those shorts and that huge belt." He wrinkles his nose. "On second thought, maybe not, because those things are—"

"Are you planning to stop talking any time this millennium?"

"You know, I seriously do not know. What I do know is that there is a piece of floor over there with my name on it," Matt says. "Really, McClane. I can just.. like… throw a towel over there in the corner, I'll be totally fine, or—"

John sighs. "Take the bed, kid."

When Matt looks away, John's pretty sure he's going to give in. But then he looks up and chews his lip for a second before he suggests tentatively, "We could share it."

Every fibre in John's body immediately screams that this is another Very Bad Idea, even while his traitorous dick gives another stir of interest. He hesitates in the doorway, trying desperately to come up with a reason _why_ it's a Very Bad Idea, but the part of his brain that comes up with ideas on the fly – the part that decides to tape a gun to his back or drive over a fire hydrant to take out a bad guy – has seemingly shut down on him entirely.

So he simply finds himself giving a short nod and crossing to the bed. He waits for Matt to get situated under the covers before he climbs in, lying flat on his back and folding his hands stiffly on his chest. Matt, for his part, snuffles and fidgets before also settling on his back. They lay in silence for a few moments, and though he doesn't turn his head he can feel the weight of Matt's gaze on him.

"So. Uh. Goodnight," Matt says.

"Goodnight, kid," John says. He forces his hands to unclench on his chest, forces himself to close his eyes. Tries not to listen to the soft and steady breathing so close, not to feel the shift of Matt's leg beneath the covers. He grits his teeth and thinks that he'll never fall drift off, not like this, not with the kid so close, but he never hears Matt's breathing deepen into sleep. The exhaustion claims him long before that.


	6. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

VI

The sound of breaking glass wakes him.

Matt blinks in the darkness, his heart catching in his throat. He reaches for the crappy little bedside lamp – his mind already spinning at the thought of intruders in his apartment, possibly touching his gear, no, definitely getting ready to take, to steal his precision equipment and hawk it at the local pawn shop for a measly hundred bucks and some cheap weed, and why why didn't he listen to McClane and install burglar bars on his windows and why why why can't the bad guys just leave him alone and holy shit he really needs to call McClane right fucking now – when his hand snags on rough, unfamiliar blanket. He stops with his arm still half outstretched to the non-existent lamp, and he thinks he might actually forget to breathe for a couple of seconds while the events of the last few days come crashing back. Then he whips his head towards John's side of the bed.

Empty.

Silence, except for another faint tinkle of falling glass.

If Matt was given a choice right then between going out to investigate that sound and having his nose hairs removed with a weed-whacker, he's pretty sure he'd choose the nose hairs. But he takes a breath and carefully pushes back the covers, slides his legs from beneath the tangled sheet. The floor is cold on the soles of his feet, the air chilly on his bare chest after the warmth of the blanket, but that's not why he shivers.

He makes sure he has the baseball bat before he leaves the room.

Only a thin strip of moonlight from the open bedroom door encroaches into the dank darkness of the hall, and it takes a moment for Matt's eyes to adjust, to make out John standing still and silent just outside the pool of light at the head of the sawed-off stairs. He's pulled on his dirt-stained T-shirt, shoved his feet into his boots. John's gaze flicks to him briefly, eyes cool and appraising, a soldier marking and noting a change in his surroundings, before he returns his attention to the foyer. He lifts his chin, eyes suddenly sharp and focused, and Matt hears it then, too: the soft scrape of nimble feet striding softly on parquet. The faint but unmistakable whisper of cloth brushing against cloth.

The sounds are bad enough to conjure nightmare images in his head. He doesn't want to see what John is seeing. He really, really doesn't. But he forces his stiff legs to take a step, then another, until finally he reaches John's side.

A bloodsucker is pushing its way through the door. Matt sees that the thing is a woman – was a woman – and it shoves itself through the ragged opening heedless of the jagged shards of glass that rip at its skin, leaving flaps of flesh fluttering in the air like sails, thick blood gushing from every wound to drip and pool on the polished hardwood floor. He swallows hastily around the sudden surge of bile in his throat, but can't seem to look away as the thing glides across the smooth hardwood. When it slowly tips its head toward the staircase and opens its jaws wide, its thick canines drip clear gelatinous liquid down its ravaged throat. And when the bloodsucker snaps its jaws and hisses at him, Matt recoils as if he was slapped.

"Sorry they woke you," John says quietly.

Matt spins to take in John, standing still and silent next to him, his gaze directed down to the activity on the first floor. For the first time, Matt realizes that John is holding his gun, but it's loose in his grip, not even pointing at the three – he steals a glance to the foyer – no, make that five bloodsuckers who have now crowded into the little downstairs hallway. John, actually, looks like he could be watching a not particularly interesting wildlife documentary.

"Are you kidding me, McClane?" he hisses out. "Sorry they woke me, are you really fucking serious right now? There are… we are… what the fuck are we going to DO?"

John flicks his gaze to him again, sharp and dangerous, looks away only when one of the bloodsuckers kicks at a loose board down below. " _Do_ , kid?" he says softly. "We're not going to _do_ shit. They can't get up here. We're perfectly safe."

"Right," Matt huffs out. "Perfectly safe, of course. There are only five, shit, seven bloodsuckers milling about in our front hall, but yup, no reason to be alarmed or anything!"

"Look. Kid," John says, leaving off the eyeballing of the creatures to turn to face him fully. John McClane giving you his undivided attention is always a little nerve-wracking; John McClane giving you his undivided attention when that means _turning his back on a gaggle of bloodthirsty vampires_ is downright fucking badass. Matt's actually not sure whether to be impressed or terrified.

"I'm going to stand watch," John says reasonably. "They're not going to get up here. These things can't levitate, Matty. I'm just going to keep an eye on things." He drops his gaze back to the bloodsuckers, watches dispassionately as one of them reaches clawed fingers up toward the staircase, mouth a yawning chasm of sharpened teeth. He blinks, turns his attention back to Matt. "You should go back to bed. Try to get in another hour of shut eye."

"Ohhhh," Matt says, his voice subconsciously rising in volume as he throws up his hands, "yeah, sure, I'll just do that, get some sleep, absolutely. Are you NUTS, John?"

" _Johnnnn…_ "

Matt freezes. In the space of a dropped heartbeat he feels goose-bumps rising on his arms; in another, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck literally stand on end. Then his heart re-starts itself with a ragged hitch and starts racing in his chest, and he flails out a hand and grips John's bicep in a desperate grip. John's eyes are wide and unblinking, his arm thrumming under Matt's grip, and as one they slowly ease away from the stairs, hunch to their knees on the cool wooden floor.

"John. John, what the fuck?" Matt gasps out harshly.

"Keep your fucking voice down!"

" _Johnnnn…_ "

Lucy. It's his first thought, his only thought, Lucy turned into one of those freaks, bloodsuckers, vampires, and he squeezes his eyes shut, can't look at John right now, because they're going to have to kill her, kill Lucy, and there's no way—

" _Johnnnn…_ "

Except it doesn't sound like Lucy. Not at all, not even a little bit, and Matt opens his eyes, eyes John cautiously. For his part, John has gone stock still, his head cocked as he listens to the thing below moan his name again, the word floating up and up, echoing off the walls, making Matt shiver, making Matt want to moan with it, shout at it, anything to make it stop.

"Seriously, what the FUCK—" Matt starts.

"Will you just shut up for one goddamn second," John hisses, and Matt forcibly clamps his mouth shut when John stands and edges toward the lip of the staircase. Matt feels his body tense when the milling vampires take an immediate interest, and he lifts himself to his feet and cautiously duck-walks closer to the edge himself before warily standing upright, trying his best to keep one eye on John and the other on the drooling jaws snapping just a few feet below.

He's concentrating mostly on the bloodsuckers, so when John suddenly bellows "MATT" at the top of his lungs he nearly jumps out of his skin; also nearly gives himself whiplash as he whips his head around; _also_ nearly wrenches his spine out of alignment as he makes a stumbling, careening dive for John, arms pin-wheeling and heart pounding double-time.

"Shit," John says as he catches him easily, soothes a rough palm against the cool skin of his bare chest to still the racing heart. "Didn't think that one through. Sorry, kid. Didn't meant to scare ya."

"Didn't… what…" Matt gasps out.

" _Maaaaatt…_ "

John makes sure he's steady on his feet before he lets him go, then smirks and spreads his arms wide.

Matt swallows as comprehension sets in. "They're… mimicking us?" he says hesitantly. "Oh shit, what, these things are like… undead myna birds?" Matt manages to take a couple of steps backward toward the wall before he feels his legs start to wobble and he lets himself go, slumps down onto his ass and hangs his head between his bent knees. "This just gets better and better," he says to the floorboards.

There's a muffled grunt as John eases into place beside him, a light thump that's surely the gun getting set carefully on the floor. He senses more than feels John raise his hand. But it's a long moment before John's hand comes down to smooth through his hair, to cup lightly at the nape of his neck before letting go.

"I just wanted to show you that they'll copy anything, not just my name," John says. "I really didn't mean to scare you."

"Sure," Matt mumbles. "You ever do something like that again I'll rip out your kidneys with a butter knife. Not even kidding, McClane."

"Duly noted," John says.

When Matt finally raises his head a few minutes later, John is staring out the broken glass door. And though he doesn't stand up to get an accurate head-count, Matt figures there's about two dozen eager, bloodthirsty vampires crowding into their tiny vestibule. He blinks, tries to concentrate on the blank expanse of wall, tries not to hear the sounds of them brushing against each other as they move about endlessly, the occasional snaps and snarls directed to the second floor. He digs his fingers into his thighs and tries not to think about that undead thing calling his name.

When John's hand comes up to rest lightly on his, Matt sighs and closes his eyes.

Much later, after a cold spaghetti-0 meal from their stash, the situation doesn't feel entirely so hopeless. So the vampires can talk… after a fashion. It doesn't change anything, just as he kept telling John yesterday. It's creepy, sure, but the whole damn thing is creepy.

Of course, that was before the first rays of the morning sun start to penetrate the gloom of the hallway. Before he rises to his feet and join John at the banister and stares at the crushing mass of vampires hiding inside from the light.

"Uh," he says quietly. He clears his throat and swipes a hand through his hair, makes himself tear his gaze away from the hoard. "John? Quick question. How the hell are we going to get out of here?"

John's been leaning a hip casually on the banister, but now he straightens. His eyes light up – Matt's not sure he likes the looks of that – and he grins. He actually fucking grins.

"You ever break out of jail, kid?"

* * *

"I don't know about this," Matt says for the fourth time.

John finishes tying one end of the bed-sheets onto the brass footboard, gives an experimental tug before running his hands down the length of their impromptu rope. Every sheet in the place – which is not that many – has been tied tightly together, and it really does look like the escape ropes from those old gangster movies that John makes him watch.

And those guys were always successful. Yeah, _right_.

When John hikes himself onto the footboard and stretches, he can just grip the edge of the open skylight. The wind tugs at the collar of his shirt, sends a flurry of old dead leaves down to the bedroom floor, but John just nods once in satisfaction, stretches a hand back down to Matt. "Okay, kid, hand me the rope," he says.

It's his last chance, and Matt is determined to take it. "Okay, John, listen," he says quickly. "Seriously. You could shoot them! It'd be like… what's that expression… like shooting fish in a barrel, they're all just _standing_ there—"

John sighs. "We've already been through this, Matt. There's not enough bullets."

"But—"

"This is really freaking you out? C'mon," he says, "it's only two storeys. Sure, it'd be easier if it was a flat roof, we could just drop from the eaves trough, but even with starting at the highest point we're talking thirty feet, tops. That's nothing. You never shimmied down a drainpipe as a kid?"

"What?" Matt yelps. "Are you kidding? No. Who does that?"

"Never snuck out of the house to see a pretty girl?" He cocks his head, reconsidering. "Or a boy?"

"No!"

"Christ, kid, what did you do as a teenager, sit alone in your room and play Space Invaders? Don't answer that," he says when Matt opens his mouth. "This is the only way out. And nothing's going to happen to you, all right?"

Matt can think of a hell of a lot of things that could happen to him while he's balanced precariously on a rooftop in a windstorm without a safety harness. But John's got that determined, cool as a fucking cucumber look on his face and whenever John gets that look Matt tends to at least halfway believe him. So he tries to nod, but it feels more like a convulsive twitch of his shoulders.

John eyes him for a moment before rolling his eyes. "Good enough," John mutters. "Now hand me the fucking rope."

Matt watches warily as John flings the rope out onto the roof before hiking himself up, grunting and using his upper body strength to pull his body through the opening.

"It's not bad at all, there's a little platform up here for the exhaust pipe," John calls down.

"Great," Matt mumbles. "Maybe we can have a picnic up there before we plummet to our deaths."

John's face appears in the skylight, upside down and grinning. "I heard that," he says. "Toss up the backpacks and shit, then gimme your hand."

Matt vaguely remembers a time when he used to actively challenge authority. Now he just bends his head and does what he's told, throwing the backpacks to John's waiting hand, handing up the bat, then climbing nervously up onto the bedrail and reaching up, gripping John's arm, letting John pull him up a foot until he can get a grip of the edge of the skylight and haul himself out into the sunlight. The platform that John had so happily reported on is actually a thin particle board ledge that he can feel creaking under his feet as he tentatively rises to his feet.

"See," John says when he's upright. "Not so bad."

Matt cups his elbows, shivers in the cool breeze and tells himself that his knees are knocking together because he's cold. "Yeah," he says dryly. "Not terrifying at all."

"You don't really like heights, huh?"

"Yeah, I'm not really—"

"I wasn't too fond of them either, once, but you get over it," John says.

"Like flying?"

John's lips twitch. "Touche," he says. He claps a hand on Matt's shoulder. "But hey, I did it, right? You can do this."

Matt suddenly realizes that he must look _really_ scared if John is giving him a pep talk instead of ordering him to grow some balls. He makes a determined effort to relax. He jumped over a six foot gap between buildings six storeys above ground! What's that compared to shimmying down a sheet-rope a measly two stories? It doesn't matter that the sheet-rope is comprised of threadbare material that could come apart at any second, unravelling and sending him crashing to the ground to break a leg and there's no doctors and millions of bloodthirsty vampires huddling in every building just waiting for the sun to set so they can get out and find him and—

Matt swallows around a suddenly dry throat, blinks rapidly. That way of thinking only leads to badness. And John is still looking at him, waiting for a response, so he deliberately rotates his shoulders, pushes at the wind-tousled hair that keeps getting into his eyes. "Okay," he says, intentionally doing his best to make his voice sound light. He tugs at his hair again when the wind immediately pushes it back into his eyes, blinding him, and huffs out a sigh of frustration. "You know, there are advantages to being bald."

"We can always find some clippers."

"Hah. Funny."

"I'll be here all week," John says. He tosses the rope over the peak of the roof, looks back at Matt with a cocked brow. "Ready?"

Matt fingers the ripped collar on his shirt, shivers again and again tells himself it's just the wind. "Maybe we could check the office again first, make extra sure there aren't any clothes that would fit—"

"Ready?" John says again, a little more firmly this time.

Shiiiiit. "Seriously, McClane, this is a really fucking bad idea."

"That's my line."

"What?"

"Nothing, kid," John mutters. "Look, I'll go first, you just follow me, all right?"

He doesn't stop to get a response before he's flinging his leg over the peak of the roof and shimmying backward on his stomach. And Matt honestly wishes he didn't have such an active imagination, because sometimes it's really good, like when he pictures John deliberately peeling out of that damned dirty T-shirt, lifting it oh-so-slowly to reveal his taut stomach, the dark circle of his nipples, the muscles in his arms bunching and a knowing smirk on his face –

\--and sometimes it's really sucks, like now, when he can see John slipping on a loose shingle and sliding across the roof, fingers bleeding as he scrambles for purchase before he tumbles into the air and lands with a sickening crunch on the ground and—

"Matt?"

Matt swallows again before looking up to plaster what he hopes is an encouraging smile on his face. "I'll…yeah. I'll be right behind you," he calls.

John seems to take him at his word, because he nods once before disappearing over the edge.

"—when pigs fly," Matt mutters to himself.

"Heard that too, kid," John yells, and then there is only the sound of John's feet digging into the shingles, the sheets pulling taut as he moves, and Matt holds his breath until he hears John land in the gravel garden at the back of the house. Then he breathes a sigh of relief.

"It's… a little short," John calls up to him. "You've gotta drop the last six feet."

"Great," Matt mumbles.

"I'll be right there," John yells. "Come on, Matt."

Since meeting John McClane, Matt has done a hundred things he never imagined he'd ever do. There's the big stuff, like stopping a cyber-terrorist and killing two men. Getting shot and actually living to tell the tale, not that anyone ever believes him. And there's the little things, like discovering he actually enjoys NCAA basketball but that he especially likes it when he can watch it with McClane; and like spending a Saturday afternoon getting covered in grease while helping John work on the old clunker in his garage. And then there's the things he's discovered, some of them – like _whoa okay bald is hot_ – on that crazy road trip; and some of them later, like the way he likes to see the lines around John's eyes crinkle when he smiles at something ridiculous Matt says, and how that just makes Matt keep trying to say even more ridiculous things. Or the way that John just routinely manhandles him into the right spot on the sofa/out of the way in the garage/into the car after a night at the bar that makes his skin heat up and his dick twitch from the way John's hands _feel_ on him.

He never imagined he'd ever be on the run from killers or getting the key to the city; never imagined he'd apply to join the Joint Terror Task Force or learn how to strip a carburetor or… or fall in love with a broad-shouldered half-cyborg supercop twice his age.

"Matt!" John yells, and now Matt can tell he's getting cranky. "What's the fucking hold-up, c'mon!"

He never imagined he'd be rappelling from thirty feet in the air. Using old stained bedsheets as a rope. In a city full of vampires.

Matt takes up the rope, and finds himself grinning. The things he's done since he met John McClane.

* * *

Shards of glass litter the ground, pinprick specks like diamonds and massive stiletto-thin chunks. It crunches under their feet as they walk, sparkles from every surface.

Before the Apocalypse, One Police Plaza had been an architectural marvel, a five-storey shining structure of reflective glass and burnished steel. Now every window at the precinct has been blown out.

They stop at the bottom of the stairs. The wind yanks at Matt's torn collar, lifts his hair, swirls the papers from a dozen different case-files around his legs, flings up the tiniest of the glass fragments to sting at his exposed arms. He squishes his eyes to half-slits, squints up at the gaping maw of the door.

"What—"

"They were letting in the light," John says.

Matt nods. Of course. The building was always sun-drenched as it was, at least in the foyer and open spaces, but he could imagine the cops making a last stand here wanting to get as much advantage as they could over the bloodsuckers. As they trudge up the wide steps, Matt remembers that on the few times he stopped by to see John, the building was always loud and bustling – people dashing in and out; uniformed cops loitering on the stairs or around the corner, surreptitiously grabbing a smoke where the bigwigs couldn't see; the secretaries and 911 operators eating their bagged lunches on the low stone wall that borders the flower beds. Now the building is silent, and the only sound is the flag snapping mournfully in the wind.

No, he corrects himself as they enter the brightly lit foyer. Now the building is dead.

Matt clutches his baseball bat more firmly in his hand, tries to look everywhere at once. The marble floor is almost buried under a deluge of paper, reports and files blown by the wind from every desk space. The curved open staircase that stretches airily to the second floor is blanketed by them like confetti. They shuffle around his feet as he walks, trailing John around the wide reception desk.

There, the carnage begins. The bodies are slumped everywhere, flung over desks or onto the floor like rag dolls. Patches of dried blood stain the floor, but not enough of it, not nearly enough to account for all the dead. Signs of struggle are everywhere, from the smashed desk lamps to the toppled filing cabinets. A woman in a pale pink dress lays stretched on the floor only feet from where he stands, her face forever frozen in her final scream. Beyond her, a man in a grey suit, the blood dried copper on his starched white shirt. Two men, one in uniform, are collapsed together, both of them with their throats ripped out, not bitten, not torn, just gone, their heads now lolling on their shoulders because they literally no longer have necks. And the stench… the stench is overwhelming. Matt takes a step back, clutches a hand onto the counter and looks away, looks anywhere but at the bodies strewn across the floor.

His eyes flick to John, at the taut line of his shoulders, the jaw clenched tight, and thinks that if this is bad for him how much worse it must be for John. Who may have known these people, may have worked with the man in the grey suit on a case, may have playfully teased the woman in the dress as he passed by her desk every morning. Looking at John holding himself rigid, so still, is hardly less painful than seeing the large-scale slaughter. Matt looks away.

And he freezes.

In all the offices that line the open foyer, all the little cubbyholes and cubicles and divided spaces – the bloodsuckers slink in the shadows, eyes bright in sunken faces. Teeth gleaming.

When John tenses beside him, hand straying to the holster strapped under his arm, he knows John sees them too.

"Fuck," John says.

Matt would love to see that fuck and raise him a holy motherfucking mother of God, but for a long moment his lips won't actually move. After two tries he finally manages to rasp out, "Where's the ammunition cabinet?" and is inordinately proud that the words are both understandable and form a complete sentence.

"Second floor, back of Scalvino's office," John replies softly. "Leave this," he adds, as though Matt was going to go rummaging around in someone's desk or rooting in a suit-coat.

They back away slowly, and the vampires seem to move with them.

They take the stairs two at a time, moving slowly and being careful to stay in the light, but Matt thinks it's almost worse here. From the open banister on the second floor vampires hang over the edge, reaching with clawed hands in a vain attempt to draw them in. The ones in the offices below thump against the windows and hover in the open doorways, their gazes flicking between the men on the stairs and the thick bars of sunlight on the floor that blocks their access to their food. They start to wail, a high-pitched keening that makes him want to clamp his palms over his ears. The wind whipping through the open building seems to increase velocity to match the sound of their cries, snags in his hair and sends more paper swirling around his knees.

It seems like they've been walking forever but they are barely halfway up the staircase, and Matt can see that the strip of light at the top of the stairs has narrowed to barely more than the width of a person, and the vampires – dozens of them, dozens of dozens – press in from all sides. They're not going to make it, no way they can get all the way back to Scalvino's office. And he sees when John realizes it too, when his shoulders slump and he stares, glares at the undead that surround them, like they should realize that he's John McClane, motherfucker, and just move out of the goddamn way.

Having been on the receiving end of that glare a time or two, Matt's almost surprised they don't.

Then his gaze drifts to the steps, and things abruptly go from bad to worse.

"Okay," John says. "Okay, Plan B. What the fuck is Plan B?"

"Yeah, uh. McClane?"

"Shit! Think, John, think! Okay, okay, evidence locker—"

Matt eyes the lengthening shadows on the floor warily. "McClane, I really think—"

"No, fuck, two corridors between there and here. Shit! Back staircase—"

"JOHN," Matt says loudly, "I think… yeah, I think we might be in big trouble here."

John rounds on him with a scowl. "Jesus Christ, kid, WHAT?"

In reply, Matt tilts his head up to the massive skylight. The clouds massing above are clearly visible, large and white and fluffy. And slowly, inexorably soaring their way across the sun.

In unison they turn, their gazes dropping first to the strip of sunlight painted across the wide wooden stairs, getting narrower every moment, then to the wide expanse of lobby. The cloud cover has already affected the amount of light that streams into the big room, and the vampires that were trapped in the tiny offices are now gliding across the marble floor, heads cocked, eyes wide and unblinking, noses sniffing the air as they raise their heads to the smell of fresh meat.

"Yeah," Matt says. "Shiiiiit."

"Don't talk, kid," John mutters. "RUN!"

The dash down the stairs is headlong and frantic, John pushing at his heels. Matt skids when he hits the marble floor, skids almost as far as the shadows that now blanket the room. The bat is tugged from his grip, and he lets out a yelp when a hand comes down on his arm, flails out wildly with his fist and lands two haphazard blows before he realizes that it's John tugging on his arm, John urging him up and away. The light in the room has trickled down to a mere spotlight now, and he gets his feet under him and picks up the pace, his breath screaming in his ears. When John's gun fires he flinches, actually feels the breeze of the bullet as it passes by his head, swears he feels the draft of it lift his hair, and the vampire that was reaching for him with open jaw and dripping fangs – the vampire he didn't even see – falls over at his feet, a large round hole in its forehead, still twitching in its death throes when John plants a meaty hand in the middle of his back and shoves him forward, gets him moving again.

The gun goes off twice more before they reach the jagged hole where the door used to be, Matt through only a second before John, and Matt has a sudden fear that outside won't be safe, that the cloud cover will make it dark enough for the bloodsuckers to walk the street in daylight. But outside there are no shadows, just dull light and the hint of rain in the air, and he jumps the steps two, three at a time and doesn't stop until he's fetched up against the flowerbeds, knees bent, gasping for air.

"Jesus," he says. "Jesus, John. Jesus Christ."

John wipes a hand over his head, slumps beside him, his breathing harsh and laboured. "I think Jesus left the building a long time ago," he says.

* * *

John isn't talking.

It's understandable. He'd bet almost everything on finding colleagues at One Police Plaza, on being able to create order out of the chaos. He'd been confronted with the absolute reality of the deaths of his friends, no longer able to pretend that maybe some of them were alive and holding down the fort at the precinct. Unlike Matt, who could still try to believe that his parent's big house in New Haven was somehow protected by a magical force field that repelled all manners of undead things.

Once they'd got their breath back, John had set them on an unrelenting pace towards a gun shop he knew nearby. The sun had come back out as though it had never left, the clouds disappearing like puffs of smoke. Even the wind had died down to nothing more than a gentle wisp of air. The heat was unremitting, and sweat was already pooling on his skin, trickling down his back and plastering his hair to his skull. His tentative request to make their first stop some kind of clothing store so they could get out of their sweat-soaked gear had been met by a glare and more stony silence.

So Matt trudges in John's wake, his eyes on the ground.

Matt hadn't realized just how much hope he himself had pinned on the 1PP. Despite everything they've seen, despite what must have been the total pandemonium and confusion of those final days, he really believed that there'd be survivors there, that some semblance of law and order must have endured to carry on. And it only makes sense that any survivors would be drawn to the central station, that one place where they knew that they could get help, and to find it empty of everything but vampires and the fallen dead was just—

Matt blinks.

"We need to go back," he murmurs. He looks up to find John eating up the pavement in front of him, raises his voice to be heard. "McClane!" he calls out. "We have to go back!"

John turns back with a scowl, but he waits until Matt jogs the half dozen paces to catch up with him.

"We have to go back," Matt says again when he reaches John's side.

"What?" John barks out. "There's nothing there, kid. Everyone's dead."

Matt is shaking his head before John even finishes speaking. "No, McClane, hear me out. Any cops left in the city would know to go there, right? That's what you said. One Police Plaza is like… what… the mecca of New York cops or something. Hell, civilians would probably make their way there too, right? And they're going to find what we found, blown out windows and vampires everywhere—"

"Yeah, yeah, everybody's dead, kid, we got that covered. What's your fucking point?"

"Don't you get it? Someone could show up there right now, right this very instant, and they'd never know that we'd been there, McClane! We've got no way to stay in touch, all systems are down, total communication breakdown. We've gotta go back and we've gotta find something to make a sign… we need… shit, we need paint, like house paint and a brush, and some kind of, maybe we could find a street meat sign, turn it over or—"

But John is already smiling. He takes a couple of steps toward the store on the corner, draws his gun and fires to shatter the window in one fluid motion. He takes a quick look inside before poking his hand carefully around in the shattered glass of the display case, roots through a collection of sketch books and modelling clay before he emerges with a couple of small tubes of acrylic paint in bright blue and christmas green.

"Think these'll do?" he asks.

Matt answers his grin with one of his own. "I love artists."

In the end John darts back into the precinct while Matt stands worriedly at the door, keeping one eye on the sky and one on the bloodsuckers who have retreated, still snarling, to the inner offices. It takes John about fifteen minutes to pry the top off of one of the battered desks behind reception, and after some deliberation they prop it against the foundation outside, a few feet from the door. 'Survivors. Meet Here', the sign reads in large cobalt letters. '11am to Noon. We Will Check Every Day'.

"Looks good," John says. He clamps a hand on Matt's shoulder, squeezes once before letting go. "It's a good idea. Thanks."

Matt is pretty sure he hasn't blushed since high school, but he finds himself reddening now. He shrugs awkwardly at the compliment, then steps back to admire his handiwork. "Simple, but effective," he pronounces.

"You're a regular artiste," John says drily. And Matt guesses that's as effusive as John McClane's gonna get, because he's already striding down the stairs and across the pavement before Matt has finished tucking the paint tubes into his backpack. Matt hurries down the stairs, catches him just as John is passing a row of cars stacked neatly against the curb.

"—so, c'mon, chop chop," John is saying. "We've gotta clear that hoard at the house and we still need guns, ammunition, and Garcy's isn't exactly nearby, it's sort of off the beaten…"

Matt nearly runs into John's back as he stops short. He tenses, looking anxiously around the street. This section of the block is remarkably free of congestion, only a few cars angled in the road with their doors open, a black SUV crashed into an electric pole down the block near a hair salon. He steps around so he's in front of John, eyes him warily. "Garcy's isn't exactly…?" he prompts.

"Stupid!" John grits out. He grinds the heel of his palm on his forehead. "So fucking stupid."

Matt feels a sudden rush of panic. Okay, so they've been through a lot. Little sleep, lots of stress, vampires, end of the world. It's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's enough to make anyone go a little loopy. But he honestly has no idea how to deal with things if John McClane suddenly loses it. "Uh…" he starts.

"Jeeeesus, kid. We need guns and ammunition? They're right in front of our fucking noses!"

When Matt just looks at him blankly, John shakes his head and draws his gun, uses the butt end to smash in the window of the dark blue four-door next to him. For a moment Matt has a terrible sense of déjà vu, wonders if someone named Dolores is going to oh-so-politely inform him that emergency vehicles are on their way.

Then the light bulb suddenly goes on. "Police car?" Matt asks.

"Fucking police car," John confirms. He scrubs a hand over his jaw. "Not thinking this shit through, jesus."

"Well, you've kind of got a lot on your mind here, John," Matt says hesitantly.

John presses his lips together and hangs his head, but Matt thinks – hopes – that he also looks a little reassured.

Matt opens his mouth. He wants to say that John is the only thing that's keeping him together, that if it wasn't for John he wouldn't have survived his first day in the city. He wants to say that he's amazed and impressed and astounded by the things John does, before the apocalypse and after it, by the way he picks himself up when shit goes wrong, by the way he side-steps around problems and finds solutions to situations that seem impossible. He wants to say that John is the only person that's ever given a shit about him, even if it didn't start out that way, and that thanks to John he's a new person, a different person, a _better_ person.

Matt wants to say all these things. But in the end he just watches John lean inside the car to pop the trunk before waving in the general direction of the open door.

"Check the glove box, kid."

"Right," he says. He blinks away ridiculous speeches to himself, concentrates, and crawls gingerly over the broken glass to wedge open the glove compartment. "Let's see, okay," he muses, rooting through the detritus, "I've got a lot of paperwork, looks like a registration... I've got a paperback." He squints at the title, wrinkles his nose. "'Criminally Handsome', now there's a best seller right there, bet they couldn't keep that on the shelves at the local K-Mart. Okay, there's… whoa, okay, very melted chocolate bar, that's disgusting," he grouses, leans back and glances around the car to find someplace to wipe the gooey mess from his fingers. He finally settles on scraping his hand ineffectually on the vinyl dashboard before digging back into the mess.

"What else?" he continues. "Oh, _condoms_ , nice, Officer," he says sarcastically. "Just what I'm sure you need when you're _working_. Got some tissues, excellent accompaniment to the rubbers there, geez. And… bullets! I've got bullets!" He holds up the box proudly, looks over at the open driver's door. Where no one is standing. He shakes his head. "Aaand I'm talking to myself. Awesome."

He leans back against the passenger window, almost falls out when the door is opened suddenly behind him. He scrambles out of the car just as John cracks open the chamber on his newly minted shotgun. Apparently his raid on the trunk was successful.

"So," John says without looking up from the gun, "what'd you find?"

Matt bites back a sigh, resists the urge to shove 'Criminally Handsome' under John's nose. "Bullets," he says.

This peaks John's interest. "What kind?"

Matt glances at the nondescript box, gives it an experimental shake. There's a nice satisfying rattle from within. "The… kind that fire from guns?" he tries.

John huffs out a breath, finally looks up from his study of the new weapon. "What calibre, Matthew?"

"Oh, right," Matt says. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, studies the box a little closer. ".44? Yeah. .44."

"Wrong size," John says shortly. He snaps the shotgun back together before propping it against the car, pulls a second gun out of the waistband of his jeans. Apparently the raid on the trunk was very successful. "We're looking for 12 gauge for the shotgun, 9mm shells for this," he indicates the new gun with a wave of his hand, "and .38 magazines for the Sig. Got that?"

"Not even a little bit," Matt says, but he shrugs and makes a move to toss the unneeded bullets into the back seat of the car, startles when John reaches out quickly to snag at his hand. "Keep 'em," he says, and the next thing Matt knows John is manuevering him around, John's big hands firm and sure on his shoulders, and it's stupid and ridiculous and wrong but he _likes_ it, feels a little trill of anticipation and excitement in letting John handle him this way.

He ducks his head so that John can't read his face, waits for him to open the pack on his back to slip the box inside.

"But you just said—" Matt finally says over his shoulder.

"Never know when we might need them." He hears the zipper being pulled shut, then John is tugging on his arm, urging him toward the next car. "C'mon, kid, we got a lot more vehicles to search."

* * *

"Really, McClane?"

"You've been whining about wanting clean clothes all fucking day," John says reasonably.

"I haven't been whining," Matt protests immediately. "I've been stating that we're both filthy and we reek to high heaven and it's actually unsanitary to wear the same clothes three days in a row, it can actually cause proven health issues—"

"Matt—"

"—including a form of staph infection that's resistant to all standard antibiotics. And from a psychological standpoint—"

"I," John says slowly, "do not give a flying fuck about your psychological issues, Matthew."

"But—"

"Shut up."

"But this is—"

"Shut. Up."

Matt sticks his hands in his pockets, most definitely does not pout as John shades the glass with his hand and peers through the window of the souvenir shop.

"And stop pouting," John says without looking around.

"I'm not—" Matt huffs out a breath, catches John's smirk in the window.

"Looks perfect," John proclaims when he steps back. He gives the store a final once-over before nodding his head. "Ain't gonna get better than this."

" _The Gap_ would be better than this," Matt mutters under his breath.

"What's that, kid? Gettin' old, can't hear ya."

Matt hates the way John can force a smile out of him when he has every right to be grumpy. Hates it. He grins reluctantly anyway. "Yeah, you're ancient, McClane" he says. "You practically need a walker. I was saving up to get you a hip replacement for Christmas."

"Yeah, I had your subscription to Superheroes Monthly all picked out."

"I… would have liked that, actually," Matt says. He shakes his head. "Anyway, McClane, I'm just saying there's probably a retail chain somewhere around here, if we just keep walking—"

"Listen, kid. This is a small store, entirely glass fronted. No bloodsuckers inside. One door at the rear, closed, probably for a bathroom. It's safe and it's got what we need for now."

"Goddamn logic again," Matt says. He throws up his hands. "Fine. You got a key or are you just going to shoot out the door like usual?"

"Nah, kid. Gonna do this the old fashioned way."

The old-fashioned way turns out to be hefting a wire-mesh garbage can and swinging from the hips. Matt flinches back at the sound of the shattering glass, finds himself darting his head around subconsciously looking for the cops and waiting for the strident clang of the alarm and the sirens. Old habits die hard.

He takes a couple of reluctant shuffling steps toward the hole where the door used to be, stops only when John holds up a hand and draws his weapon. "I thought you said it was safe," he hisses.

"It is safe," John says. "I'm just… making sure it's safe."

Matt finds himself almost holding his breath as John steps carefully over the shards of broken glass, slides through the door sideways to avoid a jagged section that still protrudes from the door frame. A quick swivel of his neck confirms what he'd already shown Matt – the retail space itself is empty. And four long strides take him to the small cashier's counter at the back of the store. Matt watches him take a breath before diving around the side of the counter; in another stride he's cleared that space and flung open the bathroom door. When he straightens and gives Matt the thumbs up, Matt lets out his own sigh of relief.

"Come on in, kid," he calls as he holsters the gun.

Matt knocks out the jagged piece of glass before following John into the tacky little shop, hoping for at least a respite from the sun. But the glass front has done nothing but store the heat for the last week, and it's no better inside than out. He wonders exactly how long it'll take before he forgets that things like air conditioning actually existed. And that starts him thinking about what it'll be like in the winter, with the snow piling up in the streets and no heating in that little house. Except that there's no point even thinking about that because they've still got a couple dozen vampires staked out in their foyer and he's been reduced to doing his clothes shopping at Kitsch Central and honestly, he might not last the day, never mind until the winter.

He's pulled away from his ruminations when John strides up to him waving a new white T-shirt.

Matt's eyes widen and he backs away. "No," he says. "No way."

John frowns down at the shirt, back to Matt's face. "What? It'll fit."

He reaches out to snag at the sleeve of the clean tee that John has already pulled on – and seriously, what was he doing getting all fucking maudlin and worrying about the future when McClane was stripping like two feet away, is he nuts? – and makes a face. John's shirt is black. John's shirt has nothing more than a tiny NYC logo on the breast. John's shirt… fits him really snugly and falls to just below his waistline and when he moves, it lifts to reveal the slightest sliver of skin and—

Concentrate.

Matt shakes his head. "I notice you're not turning yourself into a walking billboard for the New York tourism authority," he snips out.

"The New York tourism authority no longer exists," John says irritably, "and they don't have this one in your size. This is fine." His arm whips out – John can move really fast when he wants to, which is almost all the time, except when he's all relaxed and mellow after a few beers and lounging on the sofa, sometimes so close that their arms brush together and on the subway later all he can smell is John's cologne and wow, really? _Concentrate_ – and snags at the dirty hem of his torn shirt, has lifted it half way up Matt's chest before Matt comes to life and dances away.

"Jesus, McClane!"

"Put the damn thing on!"

Matt catches the thrown shirt, scowls at the giant "I Heart New York" emblazoned across the front, and sighs. "Warlock never finds out about this," he says firmly as he reluctantly pulls it over his head.

John rolls his eyes, stands back to study him appraisingly. "Looks good," he says.

"Fuck my life," Matt moans.

* * *

They're still half a block away from the house when Matt thinks that he can smell the bloodsuckers inside.

It's a ridiculous notion. They're living in a dead city. Just thirty seconds earlier he had to detour around the body of a young man in biker shorts and muscle shirt, averting his gaze because the sewer rats are getting adventurous now in the daytime. He's already perfected the art of blurring his vision, letting himself only see the hazy outline of the obstacles in his path. His brain keeps circling around all the things he knows about rates of decay and the spread of disease and bubonic plague. All the good feeling, positive feeling, that was built up over the course of the day – from leaving a sign to find other survivors, from finding new guns and fresh ammunition, from seeing some of the tension drop from John's face and shoulders, even from dressing like a fool – seems to drop away with each step closer to the little house.

He sees it in John, too. One step and his back becomes a rigid line, three more and he sets his jaw, four steps and his chin juts out, six and his eyes sharpen to deadly points.

Matt has half a mind to suggest that they find another place to stay. He opens his mouth, draws breath to speak… and then closes it again, words unspoken. They did a lot to make that house secure: John searched a dozen places around them, alone, until he found the chainsaw, spent time and precious energy destroying the staircase to give them a safe haven; Matt raided the cupboards and the surrounding vehicles for food and water, lugged it all up the stairs; they both stocked the new bedroom with anything they could think of that they'd need for the long haul. The house is theirs, damn it. And he isn't going to give it up without a fight.

So he listens carefully when John gives him a quick lecture about gun safety and how to fire a weapon. He tries to remember all the rules – aim slightly off centre, aim for the largest part of the body, don't wander into the crossfire, always watch where the barrel is pointing and don't raise the gun unless you're going to shoot – and tries not to chew his lip as they approach the door.

The vampires inside stir, glide as close to the smashed in door and as they can without letting any of the light touch their skin. It's the first time Matt has been this close to the bloodsuckers without needing to run for his life, and he sees now that their skin is so translucently pale that he can actually see the faint trace of veins running beneath the surface, like pale blue tribal tattoos. He wonders if it's because they haven't fed recently. Wonders if one of them were to risk the sunlight to reach out and snatch him inside, to rip his throat out and gorge itself on his blood, if the flesh would fill out again, if there would be a healthy pink tinge to its cheek when it was done feeding.

He shivers despite the heat, a thin sheen of perspiration coating his skin. He turns his head to look at John, but John's eyes have narrowed down to mere slits, not wavering from the bodies surging and brushing together in the foyer. Probably already measuring trajectories and probable drop rates, like a… like a video game programmer deciding parameters for a new game.

Matt's never felt less like a programmer in his life.

John notices him staring then, swivels his neck slowly in Matt's direction. When he blinks it's like the cop in him gets dialled down a notch, just enough for Matt to feel some of the tension leave his own body. He doesn't ask "are you ready". They have to do this, and Matt knows he has to be ready. He just nods once, decisively, before turning his attention back to the door and opening fire.

In the end, Matt doesn't think he himself kills more than three or four of them. It is like he said that morning – like shooting fish in a barrel – the vampires so anxious to get to them that as one falls, fatally shot, another glides from the back of the pack to take its place at the door. And he tries to remember all of John's instructions, especially about shooting for the chest, but it seems that as soon as he has one vampire set in his sights its chest or head explodes in a burst of blood and bone. He finds himself flinching every time John's gun goes off so close to him, and his finger is slick on the trigger, and he flashes back to shooting Emerson in that warehouse, just picking up the gun and doing it because he had to, because if he didn't Emerson was going to kill Lucy, kill John, and he couldn't let that happen. And maybe the memory of killing another person shouldn't set his resolve but it does, and it's only at the end that he can aim a little quicker, get off the killing shot so it's not all on John. Like it usually is.

Dragging out the bodies is actually the worst part.

They pile them on the grass in the little parkette from where he'd first seen the house. John siphons gas from one of the abandoned vehicles, douses them and sets them alight. Matt thinks that part should be worse than it is. Thinks that he should remember that they were all people, not long ago, people with lives like his. Thinks that he should remember that it's not their fault that some wildcard disease got loose, or that they got bit and didn't have the good fortune to die. He thinks that he should know their names.

But in the end, if he's honest with himself, they are anonymous to him. They are the creatures that wanted to rip his throat, drink his blood, kill him or turn him into something worse than death. And he just can't find any empathy for them.

Actually, he thinks, that's the worse part.

* * *

Between them, they drag all the wood from the destroyed staircase outside; remove the stout inner doors from the kitchen and closets. While John works on planking over all the downstairs windows, Matt fetches a bucket and mop and cleaning solution from the closet and works on scrubbing the floor of the foyer. He dumps red-soaked water onto the lawn a dozen times before he's done, and he tries his best to ignore the bits of bone and skin that trickle out with the water.

John watches him, nails clamped between his teeth, every time he treks outside, but he doesn't say a word.

Together they lay three doors horizontally against the open frame of the front door, hammer them into place until every last crevice is covered.

John pulls and prods at the wood, nods. "That's it," he says. "Good as it gets."

Matt stands back to look at the house. The only entry point now is the skylight in the bedroom. He suddenly realizes he's going to have to get used to heights real fast. "It's going to be a cave," he points out. Looks to John. Always looks to John. "Will it hold?"

"Let's get inside, kid."

Matt nods at the non-answer, picks up their packs and leads the way to the back of the house only to stop short at the little gravel garden. "Oh," he says loudly, "you have GOT to be kidding me!"

John catches up with him them, follows his gaze.

The wind. The goddamn fucking wind. If Matt squints against the sun, he just see the frayed edge of their sheet rope, dangling near the chimney. The rest of it has been flung up onto the roof, out of reach.

Beside him, he hears John huff out a breath before he leans against the house and closes his eyes.

"I don't even… I can't… what else can go wrong, huh? I mean it, McClane, what else can go wrong on this motherfucking day? We're trapped in a city full of the goddamn _undead_ , and we nearly get killed looking for survivors, and there's vampire _skin_ under my nails and I just… God, McClane! And and and then you make me shop at Crap Is Us for a reject shirt that is fucking _ruined_ by the way—"

John opens his eyes. "There's three more in the bag," he says tiredly.

Matt huffs out a bitter laugh. "Oh, okay then. Good to know that I'll be wearing a nice clean reject shirt when I get ripped apart by bloodsuckers because we can't get into our goddamn house."

"Jesus Christ, kid," John says. He winces as he pushes away from the siding. "This isn't the end of the world."

"It ISN'T?" Matt says incredulously. "Look around you! In an hour and a half the sun is going to go down and our rope is currently twenty feet off the ground!"

"Then we fix it!" John yells. "God damn it, Matt. We fix it."

When John stalks off alone down the back alley behind the house, Matt is inclined to let him go. He presses the heel of his hands against his eyes, presses until he sees stars dancing on his eyelids. He feels nauseas, hopeless. Tired and thirsty. Hungry, despite everything that's happened, despite the stench of the still-burning funeral pyre and the blood slowing drying on his shirt, sticking it to his skin.

He feels just about done.

When he lowers his hands and opens his eyes, the pinpricks of light still waltz in his vision. He blinks, runs a hand wearily through his hair.

Just about done. But not entirely. He can do one more thing. They only have to do one more thing.

He catches up to John two blocks away, standing in the middle of a street crowded with cars and dead bodies, staring up at the ranks upon ranks of buildings. John glances his way when he trots up, then turns his squint back to the buildings.

"So," Matt says, clearing his throat. "I'm sorry. I guess I kind of…" he trails off, waves his arms in the air, because "went insane for a minute" doesn't seem to cut it.

"Yeah," John says shortly. He takes off again, at a less frantic pace this time, and Matt stretches his legs to keep up.

"So what's the plan?" he asks.

John side-glances him for a moment before replying. "We're probably gonna have to go into the office towers, search the janitors closets for a ladder—"

"Why would a janitors closet have a ladder, McClane? Seriously, think about it—"

"Janitors use ladders," John grouses.

"Yeah," Matt says sarcastically, " _step_ ladders! Not extension ladders! We need the kind that housepainters use to--"

"I know what we need!" John snaps. "You got a better fucking idea?"

Matt stops, his eyes widening as he takes in the scene on the next block. He turns back to John, can feel the slow grin spreading across his face. "Yeah," he says, "actually, I think I do."

The fire must have spread almost unchecked, consuming half of the street before guttering itself out. Partially collapsed buildings lay in piles of crushed concrete rubble, charbroiled stems marking the placement of inner walls and support beams. A thick coat of grey ash covers the pavement.

And a single fire truck is still parked in the middle of the road, its ladder still partially extended.

John smiles back at him, eyes gleaming. "You wanna drive, kid?"


	7. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

VII

Matt shifts restlessly in the bed.

The rain that started as a light drizzle shortly after sundown has strengthened to a robust early summer storm. He can hear it pounding on the old green shingles, pouring in a stream from the cracked and peeling gutters. He has the feeling it should cocoon him, make him feel safe – like it apparently does to John, stretched out beside him on the bed with one arm thrown over his eyes, breathing deeply and steadily in dreamless sleep. But all it does is make him feel isolated, alone. He can barely hear his own breathing over the relentless deluge.

He reaches out a hand, lets it hover over John's body. He had stripped off his shirt and popped the button of his jeans before getting into bed, and now Matt watches the rise and fall of his chest, the oblong square of moonlight from the skylight falling directly onto the light dusting of grey hair on his chest. His eyes follow the trail of hair to where it disappears beneath faded denim, and when he lowers his hand just a little more he can feel the heat of John's body, vibrant and alive.

Matt licks his lips, lets his hand fall away and stifles a sigh. The rain continues to batter against the roof, and when the strip of moonlight is blotted out, he huffs out a breath and rolls over onto his back.

There is a vampire staring down at him through the skylight.

When the lightning flashes, Matt gets a surreal glimpse of the creature – pasty white skin made even paler by the storm, long dark stringy hair plastered to its scalp and falling in clumps to rounded shoulders. Red-rimmed eyes that seem to glow in the moonlight. The fangs – the canines so long that they cut into the bloodless lips, drip viscous fluid that blends with the raindrops and splatters in streams on the glass.

The thing opens its mouth, and he can hear the snarl even above the hammering of the rain. Then it raises a hand, and just before the palm slams into the glass he can see the skin drawn away from its nails, wrinkled and sunken and fish-belly white from being wet for so long.

Matt's paralysis breaks when the first splinter appears in the glass. He lets out a scream, dives across John for the gun at his side of the bed. He vaguely hears John calling his name over the roar of another crash from above him but can't look, can't stop, and his legs are tangled in the blankets and he can't reach the gun, and when the first drop of cold rain hits his bare back he lets out a moan, a wordless cry of terror and—

"MATT!"

Matt comes awake with a start, his heart trip-hammering in his chest. He lets out a ragged gasp, tries to struggle free of the covers but John has him pinned down, strong arms pushing him into the mattress. He blinks in the semi-darkness, can just make out John's face hovering above his, eyes wide, can feel John's chest rising and falling rapidly where it touches his own.

"It's okay," John says soothingly. "Hey. It's okay. Just a dream."

Matt wrenches his head away, gazes past John to the skylight.

There is nothing on the roof.

He lets his body sag into the old mattress, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He's hazily aware that John has released him, feels the shift of the springs as John settles back on his haunches, but mostly he's aware of how loud his breath sounds in the room, gasping for air; of the goose bumps standing up on his arms; of the pulse skittering frantically under his skin.

When he opens his eyes again they go immediately to the skylight, anxiously searching the darkness. Still nothing there. Not even rain – the misty shower that had started while they were eating their cold canned dinner had drizzled out to nothing long before they had lain down to sleep. Nothing there but the night sky pressing down and the deep silence of the dead city. Not even the unceasing footsteps of the bloodsuckers reach them here in the back room.

"Okay now?" John asks softly.

"Jesus," he says shakily. He lets out a shuddering breath, swipes a hand through his sweat-soaked hair before pulling himself to a sitting position. He'd somehow managed to end up sideways on the bed, and the blankets _are_ tangled around his legs. He picks at the covers lifelessly, tries to force himself not to look up at the skylight again.

"There's nothing there, kid."

He lifts his eyes to John's then. "It was so—" he starts. But there's no way to describe it – the sense of isolation and aloneness, the horror that had frozen him to the spot, the skittering panic clawing at his insides, but mostly the feeling of doom, that his death and John's death were inevitable, that no matter how much he struggled and fought they were going to be ripped apart, consumed, left bloodless and undead. He shakes his head, takes another breath. "I'm sorry," he says.

"No need to apologize," John says. His voice is whiskey-rough in the darkness, still pitched low and calming. "If you weren't having bad dreams I'd be worried."

 _You're not_ , Matt almost says. But one look in John's haunted eyes tells him that he's not the only one who is stalked by dream predators every night. So he just nods. "I'm sorry I woke you, though. You need your rest. We have a long day tomorrow--"

John's shoulder lifts, brushes the concern away with a wave of his hand. "Every day is a long day," he says. He cocks his head, and Matt almost shivers under the scrutiny. When John looks at him like that, it feels like he can read him down to his marrow, like maybe _I can tell when you're lying_ isn't just something he says to scrawny hackers who are into shit way over their heads. "You okay to go back to sleep? We can stay up for a bit if you want."

Matt doesn't think he'll ever sleep again, but he shakes his head. "I'm fine," he mumbles.

When John doesn't reply, just watches him with narrowed eyes, Matt tries for a smile, is pretty sure it turns out shaky and kind of gruesome but it's the best he's got. "I'll _be_ fine," he clarifies. "I'm just, you know, shaken up. Which is understandable, since…" He tries not to look at the skylight, he really does, but his eyes flick there regardless of his best intentions.

Still nothing there. No downpour battering the glass. No wet, bedraggled vampire staring at him balefully. Nothing at all.

"Sure," John says.

"And I'm pretty disgusting," Matt continues, tries to pitch his voice light, wills it not to crack, and thinks he does a halfway decent job. "I am so covered in sweat, it's gross. So I'm just gonna go—"

When he waves in the general direction of the bathroom, John nods. "Okay, kid."

"Okay," Matt breathes out. He untangles himself from the covers, shivers when his feet hit the cold floor. "I'm sorry again. You… you should go back to sleep."

"Okay, kid."

Matt nods once then, makes himself turn away from John. Makes himself take the first steps toward the dark hallway. They'd set matches and candles on the floor to the right of the bedroom door, so that they could light their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night and conserve the battery in the flashlight. But the thought of manoeuvring in the dark by only that flickering light makes his skin crawl, so Matt ducks his head and snatches up the flashlight instead. He snaps it on when he gets to the hallway, makes sure that he doesn't let the light drift down to the first floor where it could leak through any thin cracks in the barricade.

He angles the flashlight so that its glow reflects off the bathroom mirror, doubling the brightness in the tiny room. His hands shake when he turns on the water, and for a long moment he just lets it run, watches it circle down the drain until he feels steady enough to dip a facecloth under the flow and raise his eyes to the mirror.

He's always been pale, but the face that looks back at him looks wan and sick beneath the scattering of hair that's all he's ever been able to grow of a beard. His eyes look like they've sunken in their sockets, feel gritty and rough. "You're fine," he tells his reflection. "It was just a dream. There's nothing there."

The face in the mirror makes a face. Matt drops his eyes to twist off the running water and run the washcloth over his skin. He tells himself that he's ridding himself of the nightmare fears along with the stink of perspiration. There was nothing there, no ravenous bloodsucker eager to feed.

But on the way back to the bedroom, he stops and stands at the head of the stairs. Holds his breath and listens.

Shuffling steps on the porch. The muted thump of a body hitting the barricaded door.

The vampires are there, still. Waiting. Searching for a way inside. Unending and undying. They will always be there.

* * *

John laces up his boots as he watches Matt sleep.

The kid mumbled and frowned when John eased up from beside him half an hour ago, but now he lays spread out easily, more on top of the covers than under them, one arm flung out, fingers limp on the sheet. A half hour ago those fingers had been pressed onto John's chest, when sometime in the night Matt had turned onto his side and curled into him, startling John from his own light doze. He hadn't woken Matt to move him, and he tells himself that it's because Matt had a rough night and needs his sleep if he wants to be at full capacity; and because he hadn't lied, they do have a long rough day ahead of them; and because by keeping Matt close he could stop the next nightmare before it got too bad.

But now, dressed in a fresh clean shirt and watching the bar of sunlight warm Matt's pale skin, he almost thinks that he can still feel the heat on his chest from where Matt's fingers had lain.

Matt snuffles in his sleep, drawing John's attention back to his face. His cheek is pressed deeply into the pillow, his hair a dark cloud against the white sheets. He looks… soft. Vulnerable. Like he needs someone to take care of him. In the old days that meant something like dragging him away from his damn computer doodads and making sure he got out in the daylight once in a while; teaching him how to fix a screen door; maybe pouring some beer down his gullet and casually mentioning Rush Limbaugh just so he could sit back and watch Matt flail and gesticulate and generally lose his shit.

Now John doesn't know what it means. He's got his own protective streak a mile wide, John knows that, he listened to Holly lecture him about it often enough. But there's a difference between wanting to make sure the people you love don't get hurt and wanting to make sure the people you love don't get hurt by the monsters that are staked out on your front door. And there's a difference between laying in your comfortable bed in your house and maybe, possibly, thinking thoughts you shouldn't think about some kid half your age who actually seems to _like_ hanging around learning how to strip a carburetor and… and having that kid in your bed, having that kid curl up against you for warmth or protection or safety or maybe just because he likes _that_ , too.

What he does know is this: Matt is tougher than he looks, but he's still a civilian. John's been around the block a few hundred times – he's dealt with just about everything life as an NYPD detective can throw at him and a few other things that don't exactly come with the job description – and maybe he's gotten harder than he should have, maybe he's pushed a lot of shit down and buried it when he should have dealt with it instead. But he's a cop, a damn good cop, and this – what they have going on now, goddamn _vampires_ – sometimes it's almost enough to break him.

He can't even imagine what it's like for Matt. Up until a year ago, the most violent thing the kid ever saw was one of his little video game characters getting killed.

Matt needs him now, and for his part John feels like there was a giant Matt-shaped hole in his life before he even knew a Matthew Farrell existed. He can survive this goddamn apocalypse but he can't imagine going back to that.

And there is Lucy to consider. Whenever he closes his eyes, whenever he stops thinking about what needs to be done right this fucking minute, he sees her face. His daughter out there, alone, nobody watching out for her, nobody protecting her. He has to find her, and he might put Matt in danger to do it, and the conflict makes him thankful he doesn't have any fucking hair left to pull out.

John sits up straighter when Matt shifts on the bed, stretches cat-like into a yawn before blinking sleepily at him. At first his eyes are hazy and distant, that genius brain still half asleep, but John can see when he remembers everything, when the eyes go sharp and alert and the reality of their situation comes crashing back. He sits up, scrubs a hand across his mouth. And tries to make it look casual when he steals a peek at the skylight.

John doesn't know how this kid ever put anything over on anybody.

"Breakfast?" Matt mumbles.

"Even better," John says. He reaches down to the floorboards, lifts up a mug. The liquid inside is half cooled now – he really didn't think Matt was going to sleep as long as he did, and he just didn't have the heart to wake him – but the scent is still strong.

Matt's eyes go wide, and he sits up a little straighter amongst the rumpled covers. "Is that—"

"Coffee," John confirms. "No filter, so expect to be picking grounds out of your teeth for the next hour. I brewed it on the hibachi."

Matt practically lips his lips when John hands it over, wraps long fingers around the mug and inhales deeply. "You brewed coffee on the…" He shakes his head before taking a tentative sip, leans back and closes his eyes briefly. "John McClane, you are a god."

"Now that you're awake, I'll work on the oatmeal," John says.

Matt blinks at him over the cup. "Coffee. _Hot_ food. Okay, just warning you, there's a very high possibility that I could actually explode from pure joy. It could be messy, I totally wouldn't want to be you having to clean it up. Just letting you know."

John shakes his head, climbs up on the chair and starts to hike himself through the skylight. He stops to glance back down at Matt, all floppy hair and big eyes and soft, contented expression. "There's no off switch with you, is there, kid? You wake up and the mouth just immediately starts yapping."

He pulls himself onto the roof, but Matt's "you love it" still follows him into the sunlight.

He's not sure if Matt realizes just how true that is.

When the oatmeal's cooking, he wanders over to the fire truck, walks the perimeter of the vehicle for the second time that day. The grass surrounding the truck is still wet from morning dew that the sun hasn't yet burnt away, and the places where it has been pushed down by the weight of footprints are clearly obvious. John stands still and silent well away from the truck, studying the pattern in the grass. He raises a hand to shield his eyes, tries to determine if the prints are more numerous at the back of the big rig, where the notched rungs lead to the roof of the truck.

He thinks maybe they are.

Matt didn't say much – anything – about his nightmare, but it doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out what he'd dreamt. And John doesn't believe in premonitions or second sight or any of that bullshit mumbo-jumbo, but he _does_ believe in using all due caution. So he's going to have to figure something else out, something to either block the bloodsuckers from the vehicle or a completely new entry strategy altogether. Another thing to think about, to plan, to fix. Call it Section 5, subsection 8 of Point D.

He grits his teeth, and only just manages to get back to the oatmeal before it burns.

Later, when they've both burned through two bowls of the stuff and are feeling comfortably full and alert for the first time in days, Matt asks, "So what's the plan for today?"

Lucy's face flashes against his eyelids, Lucy's name screams through his head. John swallows, sets down his cup. "The precinct," he says. "See if your sign paid any dividends."

"Right," Matt says. He looks up, blinking through his bangs, and the expression on his face is so hopeful and fucking innocent that it makes John's chest ache. "It has to, right? This is a big fucking city, McClane, there is no way we're the only survivors. Sure, the damage was—"

"Catastrophic?"

"Catastrophic, yes, good word. But we're talking millions of people, right? Statistically it's almost impossible for the entire city to have been killed or turned. I was thinking about it, and considering the number of people and what little we know about the progression of the disease, even with standard deviation and a very loose interpretation of the bivariate data—"

John holds up a hand. "It is too fucking early in the morning for that kind of talk."

Matt presses his lips together. "Fine, but—"

"There's a good chance there's other people out there," John says firmly, hoping that his tone will put to rest any further discussion of bivariwhateverthefuck. "We'll find out. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day."

"Sure," Matt says. He bends to tie the lace on his sneaker. "We just have to keep checking every day. Hell, it's not like we have anything better to do."

John feels his shoulders tighten, the stiff black coffee curdle in his stomach. Sees when Matt realizes what he's just said, when the kid's hands still on the laces and he freezes. When he raises his head, his entire face is a mass of regret. "I mean—"

"When we're done at the 1PP," John says softly, "I'm going to find Lucy."

"Yes," Matt says quickly. "Absolutely. John, you know I am totally behind you, whatever happens I will back your play, but just… how do you plan to do that? I'm not saying you can't, shit, you're John McClane, but it's just… you heard Warlock, before the powers that be pulled the plug, the signal on Lucy's GPS wasn't moving, and—"

It's not like the kid's not saying anything he hasn't thought a hundred times in the past few days. The odds are stacked against him, John knows that. The thing is, the odds are usually stacked against him. And this is his _daughter_.

"I’ll find her."

"Okay, yes, it's just… you're not exactly Mantracker, you know, McClane? You can't look at a pebble and analyze the dirt on it and…" Matt blinks then, tentative protests dying as he sits up straight. "What do you mean, _I'm_ going to find Lucy?"

"You don't have to come along," John says. It's the best solution he can come up with, one that allows him to hunt for Lucy and still keep Matt safe, even with the potential fire truck issue. He just has to hope – pray, even if there isn't a God, even if there is and He just isn't listening – that if he can't get back to the safe house before dark, the bloodsuckers will remain stymied by the rungs on the truck for at least another day. He draws a breath as he snaps on his holster. "The doors and windows downstairs are secure, and we're stocked up with food for at least a week. You'll be fine here, kid."

For a long moment Matt just stares at him. Then he stands, holds out his hand, palm up.

"Are you nuts?" Matt asks. "I'm going with you."

"Matt—"

"I'm not letting you go out there alone," Matt bites out. "Now give me a goddamn gun."

* * *

John expects to find Lucy's cell phone rain-logged in a gutter, or half buried beneath a mound of trash, or hell, even right out in the middle of the street. His hope – suppressed but nonetheless urgent – has been that she would have left information on her whereabouts somehow on her phone, information that Matt would be able to use his skills to retrieve. If they were starring in a movie, that's how it would all play out.

But this isn't some action thriller, and there's no director on the sidelines to yell Cut. There is just him and Matt, trolling the streets of Chinatown. Just the bright red awnings and the gold buddhas in the storefronts. Just the dead pigs rotting in the windows of the shops and the fruit turning to mush in cardboard boxes stacked on the sidewalks. Just the cars blocking every street, and the dead within them or around them or next to them. There is just the stench and the heat and the bloodsuckers, hovering just out of sight in every building, shadows that shift and move in the dimness.

They search for hours, endless mind-numbing hours, climbing fire escapes to peer through the windows on the upper stories, heading down back alleys and side streets. And when John calls Lucy's name loud enough and often enough the vampires in the buildings pick up the call, sibilant whispers of _Luuuuucy_ following them as they search, making the hair on the back of John's arms lift, making Matt jumpy and skittish.

John searches every building for four square blocks, never going inside, but rapping on every window, calling Lucy's name until his voice is hoarse. If she was here, she would answer. He knows she would answer.

"Look," Matt says, finally. And he's knows the kid's been wanting to say something for a long time, has held his tongue and followed John all day, has even led the way through cramped and dingy alleys strewn with garbage and much worse. "Maybe we need to knock off for today."

Sweat has long ago soaked through John's T-shirt, dripped down his face and stung his eyes. He does a slow turn in the middle of an intersection, eyes searching the surrounding buildings. He can't give up.

"John? We can come back tomorrow, first thing. We'll be fresh then."

John knows the kid is right. They've still got to make the long trek back to the house, and the running water situation has been nagging on him. Eventually it's gonna give up the ghost and they'll need to have a supply of bottled water on hand, more than they have now, and that means breaking into a store, risking the bloodsuckers. There's too much to do, too many subsections of subsections, and Lucy is still out there, still alone.

And Matt is looking at him, brow furrowed. The kid will stick with him as long as it takes, but every line of his body shows he doesn't like it. John lets out a breath. "Five more minutes," he manages.

John shouts Lucy's name, and shouts, and shouts, and the vampires echo the call in their ghostly whispers, and… there is movement in one of the shops to the north, less than fifteen feet away.

John's head whips around, eyes wide. He takes a staggering step.

Lucy. His Lucy.

The jewelry shop has a faded blue awning, blocking the sun and almost entirely filling the building with shadow. The glass is long gone, lays in jagged shards and splinters in the street. The expensive gold chains and watches that once lined the display cases are empty, looted during the crisis. There are others in the store, stepping lightly in the gloom. John takes note of all of this in a heartbeat, the way he was trained, but his eyes are only for his daughter.

Lucy's long hair is matted and wild, her eyes wide and unblinking. She's wearing a faded pink peasant blouse, the sleeve tattered, dirt and blood and clots of other, thicker things matted and smeared into the fabric. A fold of skin flaps wetly against her neck from where her jugular has been torn out.

She opens her mouth wide, so wide, lips curling back from the long thick canines.

John lets out an inarticulate moan, can't find words. His world is filled with white noise. He only knows that he is stumbling toward her, that he failed her, that he couldn't keep her safe, and that Matt is speaking, Matt is moving with him, staying at his side--

"—ohgod ohgod McClane, stay back, oh fuck we can't let her we've got to—"

He hears the click of the safety being released, and the sounds of the world crash back. He's within feet of the window and the bloodsuckers inside the store are going mad, reaching pale white arms to the limit of the shadows, reaching for him, snapping their jaws and hissing. Lucy whips her head in a frenzy, thick clear goblets of slime flinging from her mouth, and she reaches for him, and Matt—

Matt is raising his gun, the movement looking like slow motion to John, his hand shaking as he sights down the barrel and takes careful aim.

John lets out a roar, slams into Matt's body so hard that they both fly backward into the street. The gun clatters onto the pavement.

John wrenches his head around, frantically searches the window.

Matt's shot goes wide. And Lucy snarls once, a gruesome snapping of her too-long teeth, before she fades back into the shadows.


	8. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

VIII

The long walk back to the little house had been eerily silent. As much as a part of Matt's brain always notes and files away the absent daily sounds of the city in the daylight hours – the rumble of bumper to bumper traffic, car horns bleating incessantly, music spilling from the shops – this is a different kind of silence. There is no rustle of sewer rats making meals of the dead, no squirrels perched atop utility poles or skittering across dead power lines. Even the birds are quiet.

It's as though the entire city is somehow paying its respects.

Matt opens his mouth several times over the lengthy stretch of blocks, but always ends up closing it again, words unspoken. The things he could say – sympathy or apology – seem woefully inadequate. He tries to catch John's eye as he walks steadily beside him, but John keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the middle distance, and finally Matt gives up and just plods along. He listens to the slap of his sneakered feet on the pavement, and tries to push that last final image of Lucy from his mind. He tries to remember her the way she was the last time he saw her, just a few weeks ago.

He'd had a client meeting out in Jersey, his last before he gave up independent programming to join the Joint Terror Task Force, and she'd stayed on at Rutgers for her summer internship. They'd met at one of the grease trucks on campus, downed Fat Sandwiches and entirely too much soda and talked for hours. The talk had turned to the upcoming Independence Day holiday and her plans to visit Holly in California, and she'd leaned across the table, eyes sparkling.

"The field doesn't get any more wide open than this, Farrell," she'd said. And when Matt had haltingly protested having any interest whatsoever in her dad – again – Lucy had huffed in annoyance. "Just jump his bones already," she had said. "Jesus, the way you're mooning? It's getting annoying. And fucking _obvious_."

If the truth is to be told, Lucy's constant teasing is part of the reason he had decided to invite John over for the Fourth this year. There might not have been bone-jumping – Matt doesn't have a death wish, and he's still not entirely sure John wouldn't have just punched him in the nose if he made a move – but there would have been sparklers on the fire escape and cold beer and maybe… maybe something more.

Now, he watches his feet take one step in front of the other and feels the early evening sun beat down on his bent neck, and tries to firmly fix that Lucy in his mind, the one that encouraged him to take chances. The one who was whip smart and sarcastic and funny as hell. The one who'd roll her eyes and toss her thick braid over her shoulder whenever she was annoyed. The one who had half the guys on campus trailing after her like obedient little puppies, even when she was totally disinterested… especially when she was totally disinterested.

He will remember that Lucy, he tells himself firmly, and not the thing that she has become.

Matt is lost in these thoughts when they reach the house, and John still doesn't say a word, just climbs the rungs to the top of the fire truck and starts up the ladder. Matt hesitates on the ground and watches him disappear beyond the peaked roof. Then he slumps a shoulder against the wall of the house, stares sightlessly forward and tries not to think of anything at all.

The brick digs relentlessly into his shoulder and he turns, frowns at the wall and raises a hand. His questing fingers brush away a layer of red dust, a small surface skin of brick crumbling under his exploring hands. His shadow is blocking the light, and when he moves he sees several other places where the brick is very subtly being worn away, shallow slashes digging into the clay.

Matt's brow creases as he frowns at the marks. But it's not until he wedges a fingernail tentatively into one of the narrow depressions that he realizes what it means.

A shiver goes down his spine as he whips his head around, eyes searching the small lot. But of course the bloodsuckers are still huddled inside the surrounding buildings, hiding from the sun. It won't be until evening that they emerge and flow to the house, stand shoulder to shoulder and dig their fingernails into the bricks, scratch and scratch, digging relentlessly at the clay as though they can burrow their way inside.

It's too much. On top of everything else, it's just too much. And Matt deliberately blocks it from his head, closes it off as something to deal with tomorrow or the next day. Squares his shoulders and strides back to the fire truck and the roof and John. John is what he has to deal with now. John, who isn't dealing well with anything at all right now.

Matt finds him perched on the edge of the chair, shoulders slumped and fingers clasped loosely together, staring at the floorboards. The room is hot and stuffy, the tension only adding to the cloying atmosphere. He takes a few halting steps forward, lifts a hand and lets it hang in the air.

"John?"

He takes another shuffling step when John says nothing, lets his hand drift toward John's shoulder.

"Don't touch me."

Matt flinches back. John's voice is like nothing he's ever heard – rough and raspy and full of menace. It is the way he sounded talking to Gabriel; the way he sounded last winter in the liquor store when they came across that junkie with the shotgun. It's the _don't mess with me_ voice, the _I will shoot you without thinking twice and not lose a minute's sleep_ voice. But Matt's not a perp with a meth habit, and this is John, John who would never hurt him, and he's in pain and closed off and Matt has absolutely no idea what to say but he knows that he's got to try.

"John, listen, I can't even begin to know what you're going through—" he starts. His hand brushes lightly against John's shoulder.

John rises so fast that the chair tips back, crashing into the wall. Matt's dimly aware that the wooden back of the chair has actually splintered before John is pushing him back, slamming him into the wall hard enough that his head clunks onto the plaster and his ears ring.

"You," John snarls into his face, "tried to shoot my little girl."

Matt blinks, shakes his head to clear it. On the other side of the room the chair completes its downward trajectory and slumps to the floor. Here, he is caught between the cold wall and the heat pulsing from John's body, waves and waves of it, burning his skin. John's face is inches from his own, John's warm breath ghosting over his face. He hitches a breath, can feel his own heartbeat pounding in its cage.

"John—" he starts.

He raises his hands and pushes ineffectually at John's chest. It's like trying to move a Mac truck, and his mind flashes stupidly to all those hours in the gym, John doing endless reps on the weights, sweat soaking into his wife-beater and beading on his skin while Matt watched and ogled.

"I said don't fucking touch me," John grits out, grabs his grasping hands and twines them together over his head. His shoulder wrenches and he hisses in pain but John doesn't relent, just closes his big hand over Matt's wrists and presses a little closer, traps him effectively between the wall and his own body. And sure, okay, John doesn't want to be touched but their bodies are pressed together wherever they meet, chest and leg and hip, and Matt would laugh about the irony, he really would, except that his body is taking this little interlude to remind him that this is John McClane, big and burly and basically his ultimate wet dream, and his cock is taking notice, swelling just a little more in his jeans with every moment that they stand there.

He makes a noise in his throat and tries desperately to push himself further back into the wall because if John sees… if John _feels_ what's happening to him… he doesn't know what the consequences will be. He only knows that they won't be good. But John mistakes his squirming for another attempt to get free, re-sets his punishing grip on his wrists and widens his stance. Because the thing is: cops know how to restrain people. That word – restrain – flashes on and off in his brain like a neon sign, and he forces back a groan as more blood rushes to his groin.

And then John's thigh brushes against Matt's cock, just the lightest touch but enough to make sparks fly behind Matt's eyelids, enough that he can't help the twitch of his hips, too much and not enough all at once. They are so close, so damn close, and his goddamn treacherous body wants to damn the consequences and thrust against him, rut like he's in heat.

He twists away instead, turns his head and swallows around a dry throat. "John," he says evenly, or as evenly as he can manage under the circumstances, "let me go."

But John is staring down between them, and when Matt turns back it's to see John slowly raising his head. John's lips are curled in a smirk, but it's not the smirk he usually wears when Matt's around, the one that's part humour and part exasperation and part reluctant admiration. This smirk has a hint of cruelty, a hint of disdain, and it makes Matt shiver even as his cock hardens even more.

"You like this," John says. It's not a question, just a statement of fact, and despite the evidence to the contrary Matt opens his mouth to deny it. But then John deliberately shifts his hips, bringing his thick thigh into direct contact with Matt's dick, and what comes out of his mouth is a moan instead. And he can't help himself, he really can't, so he uses what little leverage he has to move his own body just a little to the right, just _there_ , and when his cock finally brushes against John's through the thick material of their jeans his hips move of their own accord, buck up against him roughly. He feels John stiffen against him, John's grip suddenly tighten painfully on his wrists. And the part of his brain that isn't thinking _want-need-touch-yes_ is waiting for the inevitable, for John to pull back and punch him, but most of those higher functions are gone. Mostly he's been reduced to a giant pile of nerve endings that are jangling at the proximity of their bodies, the thick length of John's cock pressed against his own, and when John moves his hips to put an inch of space between them he whimpers and twists in an attempt to regain contact.

When John slams his hips back and pins him against the wall, Matt realizes with a start that John is _hard_.

"You want this," John says grimly.

He can't deny it even if he wants to. His hips grind up against John's, dick throbbing and hard against the metal zipper of his jeans. When a big hand slaps onto his shoulder and presses down, Matt is suddenly aware that his own hands are free, have been free for at least a minute. This is the point where he could walk away, let level heads prevail.

Or he could take what he needs. Give John what he needs.

He lets John push him to the floor, slams into it harder than he intended and winces around the shooting pain in his calf. He ignores it as inconsequential, kneels in front of John, and his hands fumble with the button and zipper on John's jeans, fingers refusing to move the way he wants them to. He finally manages to slip his hand inside John's boxers to pull him out, hot and hard and slick in his palm, and he hears John's slow intake of breath from above him, lifts his eyes to see John watching him with narrowed eyes.

John's cock is as big and thick as the rest of him, and Matt wants to worship it, lick and suck and take his time, to show him with lips and mouth and tongue that he is beautiful and special and loved. But John would never accept it, not now, so instead he lets the head rest against his tongue for only a brief moment before swallowing John down, hollowing his cheeks and using every trick he knows to get John off. His hair falls into his eyes and he huffs great breaths through his nose, pulls off only long enough to nip and suck at the thick vein before swallowing him down again, and is rewarded when John's hips jerk uncontrollably and his hands curl into fists at his side. His own dick throbs incessantly in his jeans and he resolves to ignore it, focuses all his attention on John. He pulls back again to swirl his tongue over the head of John's cock, laps at the pre-come there before letting it slide slowly back inside—

And then John is pulling him roughly to his feet, and the cold wall is again at his back, and he only has time to draw in a breath before John's mouth is slamming against his, tongue forcing its way inside, rough and insistent. John tastes like bitter coffee and sour oatmeal and sweat, and Matt thinks giddily that it's the best thing he's ever tasted. The scruff of John's stubble scratches against his cheek when John briefly pulls away, sharp green eyes piercing and predatory, and Matt struggles to focus, wants _more_ , now, and he surges forward in a futile attempt to follow. Then John's tongue sweeps inside again, claims him, owns him, and Matt shudders and shivers and can't get enough.

"Fuck yeah you like that," John mutters against his throat, and Matt inanely finds himself nodding. He arches against the wall, his body pinned by John's heavier weight, and his hands scramble for purchase as John pushes more insistently against him. John's open mouth drags wetly across his cheek before those lips find his again, before the tongue dips back inside to plunder, conquer, devour.

John's fingers on his waistband are more assured than Matt's were with his, and in between gasping breaths Matt realizes that John is stripping him with ruthless efficiency. But it's not until John flings Matt's leg unceremoniously over his hip that Matt realizes what's about to happen. He draws in a breath to tell him what they need – lotion, shampoo, _anything_ – but then John is pressing inside, one long thick slide, and Matt hisses around the pain, too much, like he's being ripped in half, like someone is sawing him open. Tears spring unbidden to his eyes and he blinks them away, tries to breathe around the pain, his hands clutching spasmodically at John's shoulders, and he feels John hesitate for a moment, unconsciously letting him adjust before he withdraws and then slams back in.

Matt's head falls back against the wall as John sets a brutal rhythm, and when John's cock brushes against his prostate he moans, thrusts his own hips forward to match John's tempo, seeking and occasionally finding that spot that makes him gasp and writhe. When John's hand sweeps the curve of his ass and then cups him, lifts him up and settles him more firmly against the wall, he moans again, John's cock rubbing against that sweet spot now on almost every thrust.

His dick aches for release, ignored and trapped between their bodies. It stabs against the slick sweat on John's stomach but it's not enough, not nearly enough, and Matt ducks his head and struggles to slide his hand between them. He's barely moved before John has slapped his hand away.

"I said don't touch," John growls out, voice husky and raw, and that's almost enough to make Matt come undone right there. John wraps a hand in his hair and twists his fingers in the strands, pulls his head back possessively and plunges his tongue deep into his mouth and matches the quick stutter of his hips with his tongue. When he rolls his hips and rams inside him even harder Matt gasps and keens and the cry is swallowed in John's mouth.

He feels like he's on a rollercoaster, a runaway train, and his fingers slip over John's slick shoulders as he tries to hold on, feels the hard muscles flexing beneath his grip. He lets his hand trail over the sweat beading on John's rough scalp before his fingers curve around the nape of John's neck and then John's hips snap faster, each rapid-fire thrust stabbing against his prostate, each wave of pleasure more forceful than the last.

He writhes against the onslaught, the pleasure so intense that it borders on pain. And on some level he realizes he's chanting, _John_ and _yes_ and _now_ and _pleasepleasepleasejohnplease_ falling from his lips, and when John relents and drops a hand to his neglected dick he thrusts eagerly up into his hand. If he was in his right mind he'd be embarrassed at how little it takes, one or two swipes of John's fist curled around his cock and he is coming harder than he has ever come before, his back arching with the pleasure of it, his balls aching with the release, his entire body shaking as he clutches tremulously onto John's shoulders and rides the wave.

His ass clenches helplessly around John's dick and he feels John's hips stutter then, the relentless pounding becoming erratic as John trembles and sighs and comes apart.

In the aftermath Matt feels boneless, weightless, his limbs weak. John's dick is softening in his ass, the sweat already cooling on his skin. The very air in the room seems less thick and cloying. But when John makes a move to release him, he wraps his arms around John's shoulders and holds on tight.


	9. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

IX

 _Thursday, 7:12 a.m._

Matt's body feels like a dead weight and the absolute last thing he wants to do is wake up and actually move. But he can feel the warmth from the sun on his back, so he opens eyes bleary with sleep and blinks at the dust motes dancing in the air, lets his gaze sweep past the broken chair to the open door. The room is empty.

He rolls over in bed with a grunt, winces as the various aches and pains also wake up and make themselves known. The pain in his calf is like a maddening itch, a low level throbbing that reminds him of the days last summer when he was recovering from the bullet wound, the pain not intense enough to warrant taking the good stuff like Vicodin but too annoying for Advil to have any effect. When he stretches, muscles that haven't been used quite that way in years protest half-heartedly, his hamstrings in particular reminding him that he's not eighteen anymore. His asshole still feels sore, stretched with that pleasurable sensation of still feeling full and sated and immensely well-fucked. Matt leans back on the pillow, lets his hand drift to his hip. His eyes drift lazily shut, and when he brushes questing fingers lightly over the finger-shaped bruises there, his dick gives an interested twitch.

He opens his eyes, looks guiltily around the room. Still no John. So he gets out of bed, ignoring the nagging muscles that hate this plan, and hastily pulls on a pair of jeans before digging another hated New York tourism T-shirt out of his backpack and pulling it over his head. He doesn't quite know how John's going to react this morning, but Matt does know that he wants to be fully clothed when he sees him.

When he searches the floor for his sneakers, he finds the washcloth. He sits on the edge of the bed, turns it over curiously in his hands. He has only vague memories of the aftermath of the night before, but one of them is of a cold wet washcloth on his overheated skin, smoothing over his stomach and between his thighs. He doesn’t remember if he washed himself off or if John did it, but he knows that sometime after that he stumbled toward the bed, barked his knee on the footboard and bounced back and then let himself flop face-first onto the mattress. The rest of it – whatever else happened – is a blur.

He tosses the washcloth in the general direction of the green canvas bag they are using for laundry-slash-garbage until such a time as they're able to figure out exactly how to do laundry during the apocalypse. He doesn't remember washing John off with that washcloth, doesn't have any memory of swiping that soft material over firm abs or strong thighs or thick, glorious cock. He doesn't remember talking to John, or what he said if he did. The weird memory loss is like being on morphine but without all the trippy, hallucinogenic after effects.

He hears the clatter of John's boots on the roof, and suddenly Matt's throat is dry and his shoulders tighten. He takes a breath and wills himself to relax. He _knows_ that John will still be broken up about Lucy, still be angry about the whole thing and probably still angry with him in particular, and when you overlay that with the whole morning-after awkwardness it's going to be a tense, uncomfortable conversation. But Matt does his best to mentally run through every possible scenario, and he thinks that whatever John has to say to him he will have a sufficient counter.

Then John drives the fire truck into the glass office tower across the street.

 

 _Thursday, 7:27 a.m._

"What do you MEAN, you had to?" Matt shouts.

"Just what I fucking said," John mutters. He swings himself down from the cab of the truck with a satisfied smirk, his hard green eyes dispassionately taking in the crumpled bodies of the vampires he'd mowed down in the lobby. Sunlight now chases back the shadows where they had milled and walked just a few moments ago, and John's solid boots crunch the shattered glass into tiny splinters when he strides purposefully across the marbled floor.

Matt moves to follow, but finds himself stopping dead in his tracks, his mouth dropping open and bile rising in his throat.

One of the bloodsuckers is trapped under the front wheels of the truck. The thing's back is definitely broken and it flops like a fish on the line, fingernails scraping on the glossy floor as it grapples for purchase, bloodless lips pulled back from the dagger-like fangs in a silent scream. But it's the sunlight that's doing the damage, not the shattered spine. Matt shudders, sweat breaking out on his forehead, but he can't seem to drag his eyes away as he watches the skin on its arms and face darken and char and peel apart, curling like paper that has caught fire. The flesh sears and smokes, bones splintering with the sound of wood chips popping in a bonfire, and Matt is finally able to turn away then, his stomach roiling and the overwhelming stench of roasting skin caking his sinuses.

He leans a hand on one of the marble columns, trying to breath only through his mouth. His head is spinning and he's not sure if it's the fact that he hasn't eaten since an energy bar at noon yesterday or what he just witnessed, or a combination of both. But when he wearily lifts his head he finds that he doesn't have time to ponder it because John has already rounded the corner of the oversized reception desk and is striding confidently toward the hallway.

"McClane!" Matt shouts.

When John doesn't break his stride, Matt gets his feet under him faster than he thought possible, runs the last few feet and skids to a stop just before crashing into the wall. He manages to wrap a hand around John's bicep just before he steps into the dim hallway, digs his fingers in and tugs and hears John sigh before turning around to face him. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"We need a new ladder, Matthew," John says, like he's talking to the five year old that eats the paste, and Matt wants to scream, wants to pull out his hair at that smug, sanctimonious voice.

He takes a breath instead, tries for calm. "Okay," he breathes. "Okay, John. We wouldn't need a new ladder if you hadn't DRIVEN OUR FUCKING FIRE TRUCK INTO A BUILDING."

So much for calm.

He doesn't realize that his fingers are digging deeper into the meat of John's arm until John wrenches his arm away. "You just don't get it, do you?" John sneers. "The bloodsuckers were casing out the fucking joint, Matthew!"

"What?" Matt blinks, his gaze drifting toward the hallway – empty now, but if he strains his ears he can swear he can hear faint footsteps from beyond the farthest corner – before coming back to John's. "I don't know what you—"

"No, of course you don't," John snaps. "Don't worry, I'll fucking take care of it."

John whirls back toward the corridor, and though Matt raises his arm quickly he doesn't even manage to snag the back of John's shirt before John is stomping away, not even trying to be quiet, the stomp of his boots echoing off the high ceiling.

"McClane!" Matt shouts. "McClane, you can't just walk around in… there are gonna be vamps in the… jesus christ!"

Matt throws up his hands and follows.

* * *

 _Friday, 7:45 a.m._

Matt winces when John tosses the new extensible ladder to the ground – the one that he'd stormed through seven office buildings and nearly gotten killed three times to acquire, in the process giving Matt more grey hairs than he's had, oh, _ever_.

He looks down at the red clay dust on his fingers, holds the hand accusingly up to Matt. "Why didn't you fucking tell me?" he grits out.

Matt forces his feet not to shuffle in the gravel, swipes a hand through his hair and looks away. "I kind of… forgot."

"You forgot," John repeats grimly.

"A lot has been going on, okay?" Matt snaps back. The scratches in the bricks are a little deeper now, sure, but it's not like the bloodsuckers can push through the wall in a day or two. And even if they managed to get through, it'd be a space of one or two bricks. And even if they then managed – by some strange shift of supernatural luck – to pull open a space big enough for a bloodsucker to fit through, they'd still only have access to the first floor. They were safe, damnit!

John is shaking his head, his gaze alternating between the crumbling bricks and the towering office buildings that surround the little house. "A lot going on," he mutters.

"Don't repeat everything I say!" Matt bites out. "I saw it, and I meant to tell you, I really did, McClane, but it slipped my mind, that actually happens you know, there's a lot going on up there, I told you that already! We had come back here, and it was… it was the day we found Lucy—"

John's head whips up. "Shut up. Just shut your fucking mouth."

John's voice is raw and shredded and it pulls him up short, the anger draining away in a heartbeat. "John," he says softly, "we should talk—"

"No."

"We should talk about—"

"No," John says. He points a finger at Matt, eyes blazing. "You don't get to say her name."

 

 _Friday, 2:22 p.m._

The bodega has one of those steel mesh and wrought iron gates that covers both the front window and the tiny door. Matt watches John cup his hands around his face and lean as close to the glass as he can, peering inside, before he wraps one large fist around the wire and rattles it loudly. Nothing glides from the back room or pops up from behind one of the counters to snarl and hiss and bare venom-dripping fangs.

So nothing in the actual store, then. But Matt rocks back on his heels and cranes his head, taking in the six story block of apartments that tower over the tiny store.

"John—" he begins.

"Don't start," John says. He stalks around the corner to the one tiny window, set high on the wall and already cracked partially open to let in the breeze. It's an easy enough job for John to skim out of his backpack and curl his fingers around the ledge to pull himself up. He slithers through the opening like a snake, and Matt stands on the pavement outside for a good minute before he realizes that John's not going to reappear at the window with a helping hand. It takes him another minute to haul his own ass inside.

The stench hits him first thing, causing his nose to crinkle and the contents of his stomach to do a slow backflip with a half twist before settling down again. It's not the same stink of decay that fills the streets or the half-rotted overripe smell of the bloodsuckers, but it's similar – the odour of meat putrefying in powerless standing freezers, of vegetables marinating in their own juices as they turn to mush in wicker bins. They'll have to clear out a lot of crap to make the place habitable.

He spins at the sound of footsteps behind him, but it's only John. Keys jangle in his hand as he strides silently past Matt to the gate, and his third attempt unlatches the thick lock and lets him push the gate back on rusty hinges. John turns then, eyes flitting past the rows upon rows of canned goods and mouldy loaves of bread, and nods. "This'll do," he says.

When John again walks past him Matt follows in his wake, finds John in the tiny – well, Matt can't really call it an apartment, he's not entirely sure what to call it – the tiny area that's been set up behind the store. A kitchenette with attached bathroom – no shower -- leads to a second room where the owner had installed a desk, an office chair, and a folding cot. The whole thing was probably just for those nights when he stayed late and had to return early and didn't want to bother making his way home to Brooklyn or Queens or wherever the hell he lived. But it was going to make for close quarters, and… and lately John didn't want to be anywhere near him. Didn't even want to look at him.

Matt sighs. He's holding out hope that once the initial heartache is past, when the wound is not so open and raw, that maybe John will… like him again. Trust him again. He's opened his mouth a dozen times to tell John that – to remind him that it has nothing to do with the… the thing that happened between them, that he just wants to be John's friend and help him and that this whole vampocalypse thing is too big and too overwhelming for them to be on the outs – but he always ends up closing his mouth with the words unsaid.

So it will be awkward for a while. He can handle awkward. He pads back toward the kitchenette and that’s when he sees the door set into the wall. The open door, key still hanging from the lock and deadbolt pushed back.

Matt's sure that his heart actually physically stops in his chest for at least a couple of beats before it starts racing as if it needs to catch up on those missed pulses. His eyes dart frantically around the room, and he considers dashing out to the storefront to see if John is rooting through the canned vegetables or something, but he knows it's pointless. He knows exactly where John McClane is.

It's still a few more seconds before he can force himself to walk the couple of steps to the door, and he has to steel himself before he ducks his head into the opening. John is halfway up the stairs, walking on cat's feet now, and his gun is out and at his side. The staircase is narrow and dark, redolent of old cooked cabbage and caked-in dirt and the unmistakable stench of the bloodsuckers. And godddd, when he holds his breath he can hear them upstairs, hear the vampires moving, not even their light dancers treads able to stop the creaking of the old wooden floors.

He takes a hesitant step into the entranceway, clutches the banister in a white-knuckled grip. "John," he murmurs.

John head whips around, and he gestures angrily with his gun. "Shut up," he hisses. "Get the fuck back!"

Matt hesitates again, torn. On the one hand John is attempting something ridiculous, something damn near suicidal, and he can't let him go up into those apartments alone, he knows how fast those things can move. On the other hand the staircase is so narrow that there is only enough space for one person, and going up the stairs now he'd only be able to stand at John's back and watch, wouldn’t even be able to step in if John got in trouble. Both options make him feel worse than helpless.

"Go," John hisses again, and when the first vampire appears at the top of the staircase, snarls once before the gaping hole from John's bullet appears in her chest and she stumbles back, Matt makes his decision. He steps back into the tiny apartment and shuts the door.

By the time he's retrieved his gun from his backpack outside and has pounded his way up the stairs, John has already cleared the first two floors and is working on the third.

 

 _Friday, 9:17 p.m._

They end up laying the bodies of the bloodsuckers on the roof.

It's Matt's idea. Having seen what the sun could do to a walking vampire makes him hope that the condition – whatever it is that makes them virulently allergic to sunlight – is still in effect even in true death. They've barely hauled the first body out before it starts sizzling in their hands, and they end up merely tossing the bodies from the open door. The first time Matt hears a bone crack or a head make a thick wet sound like a dropped melon after connecting with the asphalt, he winces. By the tenth time, he just wants it to be over.

It takes them all afternoon. There are forty-two of them.

"So," Matt says tentatively, later, after he's scrubbed his hands under the cold water twenty times and dry-heaved silently into the toilet, "we could probably scrub everything down and take over one of the apartments upstairs…"

John shrugs. "You do what you want," he says. But when he tosses his backpack onto the cot and drops into the chair, it's pretty clear that the little apartment is where he intends to stay.

In the end, Matt drags a stained single mattress down the stairs and sets it up against the wall furthest from the cot.

* * *

 

 _Saturday, 11:35 a.m._

"Fuckin' pointless," John mutters.

Matt looks up from where he's slumped on one of the benches across from the 1PP, hands dangling between his knees. He squints up at John. "You don't know that."

John lets out a derisive laugh. "Don't I? There's no one here, Matthew. Your goddamn sign has been up for a week now, and we have seen zero survivors. You know why?"

Matt shakes his head. "John—"

"Because this is a fucking city of the dead," John declares loudly. He stomps across the pavement, pounds on the window of a bakery whose creamy frosted treats on display are alive with either mould or maggots. The vampires within shift closer to the window, and John sneers at them through the glass before turning his attention back to the bench and laughing mirthlessly again. "No one here but us walking dead, Matthew," he says. "Nobody here but the vampires who will suck you dry and leave you a husk that doesn't know enough to lie the fuck down!"

It happens fast. One moment John is gesticulating wildly, his voice almost echoing in the empty street. And the next he is being pulled off his feet, dragged backward toward the thick shadows of the store.

It seems like it takes Matt forever to process what is happening – the emaciated white arm wrapped around John's chest like a deadly serpent, the flash of pink tongue as the vampire opens its mouth, the long fangs diving down and piercing the flesh of John's neck. Later, he realizes it can only have been a couple of seconds, only long enough for him to draw his gun from the pocket of his jeans and flick off the safety. He takes two long strides, bringing himself close enough to see the panic in John's eyes, to see the thin streak of blood escape from the wound and curve down John's neck to soak into his collar. Then he is aiming and firing without any thought at all, and John's face is bathed in an explosion of blood and bone.

John crashes clumsily to his knees. And it's not until he hears the clatter of the gun on the pavement that Matt realizes he has even dropped it as he rushes to John's side, takes hold of one of John's biceps and pulls him bodily away from the window, the window where one entire pane of glass is missing, the empty space hidden by the glare of the noonday sun.

"Oh my god," Matt moans, "oh my god, are you okay? What the FUCK, John, jesus, are you—"

John manages to stagger to his feet when they reach the corner of the building, sags against the faded yellow clapboard. He raises a hand to his neck, stares numbly at the bright red blood that coats his fingers. "Just a surface wound," he says thickly. "I'm okay."

Matt stares at him for a long moment before backing away, shaking his head. "No," he says softly, "no, you're not."

"It was an accident—"

"An _accident_?" Matt repeats incredulously. "You're goddamn suicidal, McClane, and you know what? I don't want to be the one who watches you deliberately throw yourself into the path of these monsters just because you think you failed somehow! That you failed New York or the world or.. or Lucy—"

"I told you," John grits out, "you don't get to—"

"And you know what the funny thing is, McClane? It's not over. There are still people who need you, people who actually won't be able to get by without you around. _I_ need you, you goddamn piece of shit! Warlock needs you, you think he's going to figure all this shit out on his own? JACK, oh my god McClane, Jack is still out there somewhere, man. Even Lucy needs you."

John pushes himself off from the wall, and a part of Matt's brain thinks that he should be worried, that John is depressed and not thinking clearly and forcing him to face facts may have just pushed him beyond his limit. But mostly he is just _done_ , tired of being scared and tired of John refusing to look at him and tired of having to tiptoe around every single minute. He stands his ground.

"You," John says, stabbing a finger into his chest, "don't know shit about—"

"I know that you need to man up!"

John's hand fists in his shirt and Matt is spun around, slamming against the wall. They are standing so close that Matt can feel John's hot breath on his face, smell the copper-metal tang of the blood slowly congealing on his neck.

" _You're_ telling _me_ to man up?" John sneers.

Matt juts out his chin, meets his eyes defiantly. "You gonna hit me now, McClane? Will that make you feel better?" When the hand at John's side clenches reflexively, Matt smiles grimly. "Or maybe you're just gonna fuck me."

John freezes for a long moment before he releases his hold on Matt's shirt, and his face is carefully blank as he steps away.

* * *

 _Monday, 3:18 p.m._

"—so we've got it narrowed down to Arizona or Nevada. Desolate landscapes, dude. Nowhere for the fucking bloodsuckers to hide."

Matt leans back against the headrest, swivels his neck and stares blankly out the passenger window. A little further down the road he sees a dog snuffling around a big black gas guzzler, sniffling tentatively at the air and raising on its hide legs to peer inquisitively into the back seat before settling back onto its haunches. He knows he should be more interested in the dog – he's seen plenty of dead mutts in the city, cats too, bodies that are little more than scraps of fur once the vampires get through with them – but this is the first live animal he's spotted.

"Farrell."

But he's just so tired. It's nothing like those long nights of old, when he could stay awake for seventy-two hours coasting on red bull and adrenaline. This is a weariness that is seeped into his bones and seems to ooze from his pores. Just putting on his shoes took fifteen minutes. He'd walked with head bent to the precinct and spent an hour sitting on the steps staring into space; actually trudging all the way to the FDR seemed like an insurmountable task, and he only did it because he knew Warlock would have a shit-fit if he missed the scheduled check-in. Getting up and trailing after one skinny mongrel is just not going to happen.

"Jesus Christ, Farrell!" Warlock's voice explodes from the speaker. "Put the fucking cop on!"

Matt jerks in the seat and sits up, the cracked vinyl creaking with the movement of his body. He lifts a hand to scrub at his jaw and realizes that he's still holding the mic; makes a face and thumbs the transmit button. He clears his throat. "Warlock. Um. Hey, man, I—"

"What the fuck, dude? I mean what the actual fuck? I am done talking to you, you're not listening to a goddamn word I'm saying. I said put McClane on the radio."

Matt closes his eyes, taps the microphone on his forehead in frustration. He was really hoping to avoid this, praying that he could get through the conversation without mentioning John at all. He opens his eyes, sighs and reluctantly presses down at the button. "John… the thing is… John isn't exactly available to speak to you at the moment," he says.

There is a long pause before Warlock keys the mic on his end. "Farrell, you are the master of using the greatest quantity of words to say absolutely nothing. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Matt could make a comment about Warlock and pots and kettles, but he sighs instead, rubs his neck and goes back to looking out the window. The tan dog has wandered away, and Matt stares at the space where it had been, wondering if it was ever really there at all.

"FARRELL."

"He left, okay?" Matt says bluntly. The reality of it hits him in the chest, takes his breath away, and his hand flexes compulsively around the mic.

Waking up to find John gone that first morning hadn't entirely shocked him. The night before had been rough, the two of them still tip-toeing around each other, all prickly edges and unvoiced words. John had stayed in the bathroom for a long time, first scrubbing the dried blood from his skin, then gauzing and taping his wound. Matt had curled up with his back to the room and slept restlessly, bad dreams prickling at his subconscious but not enough to wake him, and when he finally woke and saw that the cot hadn't been slept in he had just nodded and heaved himself off the floor and headed out to the front of the store to make coffee.

Matt had spent that day scavenging in the trunks of all the cars in a three block radius of their new home, and had come up with some good finds. An entire box of army-issue MRE's and a gun in a velvet-lined wooden case in an entirely unprepossessing family sedan. A baseball bat to replace the one he'd lost at the 1PP in a minivan that was packed to the brim with sports equipment. Enough bottled water to fill the back of a good-sized SUV. And clothes, clothes in his size. He'd stripped out of his filthy jeans and ridiculous I Heart New York T-shirt right in the middle of the street, left them in a puddle of fabric and slipped contentedly into the new clothes. He was inordinately pleased with his plain blue T-shirt.

He remembers hoping that John was getting his head together, getting back in a good place – or at least a better place – mentally. He remembers thinking that going off alone would be good for John.

But when John didn't come home that night, he got worried. He waited until the last possible minute to drag the heavy gate across the door, pressing his face against the glass and peering apprehensively up and down the street, sure that any second John would sprint up and need entrance. The first of the vampires were drifting out into the street when he locked the gate and retreated to the little apartment in the back.

And now today, the second day of John's disappearance, and the worry has turned to fear churning in his gut. Fear that something happened to John to prevent his return, fear that John has been killed or turned, fear that he's going to be left alone, fear that anything good and decent and right that could have come out of these dark times has now gone forever.

The speaker crackles in the second before Warlock speaks. "You fucked him, didn't you?" he says drily.

"It wasn't like that!" Matt protests immediately, but there's no way to explain just how it was. How John was like a coiled spring, the tension radiating off his body in heat waves. How the anger had spilled out into the room without warning, and how it had scared the shit out of him even as it somehow, weirdly, _wrongly_ made him hot, made him twist and squirm and beg for more. How the tension had to be released, and if it wasn't that – well, Matt can still feel the way John's hands had dug into his wrists, can still look down and see the fading smudges of purpling bruises. He fingers one of them absently; realizes that he doesn't actually want them to fade in case the memories fade with them, and the memories might be all he has left.

"Yeah, I don't want the gruesome details," Warlock drawls. "So you scared him off?"

Matt flashes back to his blunt words outside the precinct, the way John had shut down after that, closed off to him more than ever. The silence in the bodega that stretched on and on and on.

He shrugs helplessly even though the Warlock can't see him. "I didn't… it wasn't…"

"Look, he'll be back soon. The cop's not going to ditch ya, dude. In his weird fucked up 50's mentality you're the fucking damsel in distress. What time did he leave?"

Matt would raise a protest about his designation in Warlock's little post-apocalyptic gay drama, but again he's just too damned tired. There's a headache beginning to press its weight into his skull, and the sun shining through the windshield stabs at his eyes.

"Around seven a.m.," Matt says. "Yesterday."

Warlock lets out a low whistle. "Well, shiiiit."

"Right?" Matt says. He closes his eyes against the glare of the sun, and when he opens his mouth to continue he finds that he can't speak around the lump in his throat. John has been alone in the city for an entire night, with no safe house, nowhere to go that the bloodsuckers can't follow. He was already upset, practically suicidal. And now he could be anywhere – he could be trapped or hurt – and there is absolutely no way to find him.

Matt reaches out a hand and blindly grips the window frame, digs in until the pain from the hard edge jabbing into his palm supplants the feeling of crushing weight on his chest.

"Okay, Farrell, listen—"

Matt jabs his thumb down on the button. "I can't," he says, "I can't do this right now. I'll check back in in a couple of days."

"Farrell," Warlock says quickly, "you're next scheduled check-in time is—"

"A couple of days," Matt mumbles into the speaker before he drops the mic. He manages to pull himself out of the cab before he loses his breakfast on the pavement.


	10. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

X

Once, in the middle of one of the spectacular arguments that had characterized the last year of their marriage, Holly had told him that he had to verbalize what he was thinking. "I'm not a mind reader, John," she had snapped. John would have rather walked naked at noon in Times Square than talk about his goddamn feelings, but he tried. For Holly, he would have tried almost anything.

For all the good it did. They were still divorced nine months later.

For some reason, when Matt walks into the room John flashes back to that conversation. The way Holly had sighed and pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead whenever John haltingly tried to explain why he thought living in L.A. was such a bad fucking idea. The way she began to jump to the worst possible conclusions, making assumptions about every little fucking thing he said. The way he began trying to memorize the way the sunlight looked in her hair and the particular shade of her eyes because he knew the end was coming no matter what he tried to do to prevent it, and he wanted to have her fixed in his mind for all the times after. He did his best to remember the strong, vibrant woman he loved because he knew nothing would be the same when she was gone.

He does the same thing with Matt now, frozen in the doorway with one finger wrapped under the tab on a tin of peaches. He stares, and files away the big brown eyes, wide with surprise beneath strong brows and surprisingly long lashes; the way Matt's ridiculous shaggy hair flops into his eyes; the scruff that he calls a beard and the full lower lip and the lean yet firm chest and slim narrow hips. He tries to remember all of it, every detail – from the scuffed grey sneakers to the plastic spoon that's sticking out from the pocket of the open plaid button-down he's thrown on over his T-shirt – because he knows that everything changes after this.

Matt sets the can of peaches down on the desk slowly and carefully. "You're back," he says.

"Hey, kid."

"Wow," Matt says. "Wow. Really, McClane? You disappear for two days and give me a goddamn heart attack and I get 'hey kid'? Are you serious right now?"

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

"Ohhhhh you're _sorry_! Oh, okay, fine then." He raises his voice and addresses an illusory audience – "McClane's sorry so everything's okay now, people! No need to panic!" – before whirling back toward John. "You know, no need to actually tell me where you were going. No need to leave a note or anything. You just go off and do whatever you have to do, no problem. No big deal at all."

John never expected this to be easy. He'd gone over everything he wanted to say on the long walk back to the bodega, but somehow in his imaginings he'd come in and said his piece and that was that. He hadn't counted on Matt's eyes pinning him down like a wrestler on the mat, hadn't counted on Matt's quick tongue.

"Listen," he tries again. "Matt. I had to—"

"No, you know what, I don't really give a shit what your deal was, okay? I don't care if you had to go storm a castle like goddamn Jonathan Morris—"

"Who? Kid, just calm--"

"--or if you had a lunch date with the Kardashians, you don't just fucking leave—"

"Lucy's dead."

The words burn in his throat like acid, leave a bitter taste on his tongue. He hears Matt gasp and then the room spins, just once, and John feels behind him for the chair, folds himself into it like an old man. His stomach lurches and he closes his eyes, tries to conjure up an image of Lucy in the same way that he once memorized every facet of her mother, but all he can see are her delicate hands hooked into claws as she reached for him, long curved fangs obscenely snapping at the air. The blood blooming rose-like on her chest when his bullet took her down.

He takes a deep shuddering breath, forces himself to look up and meet Matt's shell-shocked eyes. "You were right," he says. "Lucy needed me."

There were four of them with her, huddled at the back of a flower shop, and no matter how much he called her name, how many times the vampires echoed it along the desolate street, she wouldn't step out from behind the buckets of decaying blossoms. The sun beat down relentlessly on his head and the sweat dripped down in rivulets that stung his eyes and soaked the gauze on his neck and still he waited, and called her name, and thought he might go insane from it. And then finally, finally the sun went down and she came for him.

John drops his head, tells himself that his hand isn't trembling as he swipes at his eyes. "I had to take care of her," he finally says when his throat will work again. "She was my daughter, my baby. I had to… I couldn't… it was something I had to do by myself. I thought I'd be back last night. I got stuck, couldn't make it back." He raises his eyes again, puts everything he has into the next words so the kid will know just how seriously he takes them. "I would _never_ leave you alone, Matt."

"Jesus, John." All the anger and recrimination has drained out of Matt's voice, and that makes his gut ache more than Matt's former hostility. He doesn't deserve Matt's sympathy. He doesn't deserve anything at all. "Are you okay?"

"Spent the evening on top of the Hershey's sign in Times Square," John says. "I've had better nights, kid."

"That's not what I mean."

John remembers taking the kids to that Hershey's store the year it opened, during the two weeks he had them that summer. Lucy had been two months shy of her eighteenth birthday and had spent much of the visit pouting sullenly and complaining about missing her friends, and she had protested – vehemently and at length – that she was too old for a candy store. But her eyes had lit up when they stepped inside, and she had found a bright red M&M pillow that she said would be perfect for her dorm room that autumn, and for a moment she had seemed like his little girl again.

John rubs a hand over his jaw. "No. No, I'm not okay." He sees Matt's eyes widen, and waves a hand in the air, his eyes drifting to his backpack. "But I'm not gonna be stealing fire trucks or pulling any of those bullshit stunts. I'm just going to—"

"You're leaving?" Matt asks. John looks up sharply, sees that Matt's gaze has followed his to the packed bag. Not that there was much to pack – couple of T-shirts, an old Yankees cap he found in the back of a rusted Plymouth, the spare magazines for the Sig. Matt's eyes return to his, surprised and hurt. "You _just_ said—"

"I'm just moving upstairs, kid," John says quickly. "You can keep this place. Or grab another apartment upstairs, whatever you want. I'll stick around, and I'll help you get settled whenever Freddie finally decides on a place. I'm not leaving, Matt."

Matt leans back on the desk, absently picks up one of the half dozen tchotchkes that the previous owner had left scattered around. He flips the chipped figurine of some lesser known saint carelessly between his fingers, his eyes darting between the bag and John. "Sure seems like it," he says.

There's nothing John would rather do than stay, live in Matt's back pocket like they've been doing for a week, watch him fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. Be there if he wakes up from a bad dream, and listen to him chatter over breakfast. But he knows he can't have any of those things. Not anymore. He'll be seeing Matt every day, but nothing is the same now and nothing will ever be the same again. And he's going to have to keep that fixed image of Matt in his head now, draw it out when he's alone to keep him company.

He shakes his head, but Matt is watching him now, warily, like John might suddenly reach for his bag and make a run for it. John realizes that in Matt's eyes he's suddenly become like every other person in Matt's life that was supposed to care for him and have his back and then didn't – the parents who pawned him off on a nanny and then shipped him off to boarding school, the teachers who cared more about national averages than listening to him, the friends that dropped him as soon as his connection to the Feds and to John himself became public knowledge. He was supposed to be the one person in the kid's life that didn't let him down, that didn't… hurt him. And he fucked that up too.

And Matt deserves an explanation. An apology. No matter how difficult it is to get the words out.

"I can't," John begins. "I can't… stay here. With you. After everything that's happened, I don't know how you could want me to."

Matt shifts uneasily against the desk. "What are you talking about?"

"I put your life in danger. In the office tower. Here." His eyes drift up to the ceiling, remembering the mad dash through the apartments above, kicking in doors, half a dozen vampires converging on them at once from the shadows on the fifth floor, his ears ringing from the constant sound of gunfire. Madness and blood. He didn't care if he lived or died, and Matt… Matt could have paid the price for that. Matt could be dead, or he could one of those things, a monster, a vampire that he had to put down like a dog. Like Lucy.

"You didn't make me go with you," Matt says reasonably.

John swallows convulsively. He could debate the point, but that's not the real reason anyway. The real reason is ringed on Matt's wrists in shades of yellow and purple, branded on his hip in the shape of John's fingerprints.

He can barely force himself to look Matt in the face, but he makes himself sit straighter, makes himself look Matt directly in the eyes. Matt deserves that.

"I hurt you. I… forced you to—"

"Whoa," Matt says. He holds up a hand, frowns when he realizes he's still holding the plaster saint and carefully sets it aside. "Stop right there. You didn't force me to do anything."

John shakes his head. He's not going to let the kid do this. He was out of his head with anger and grief, but he _remembers_ pushing Matt to his knees, he _remembers_ twining his fingers in Matt's hair and shoving his tongue into his mouth. Nothing Matt says can change that. But he hopes that he can apologize, that he can make him understand, just a little. Make him… not be afraid of it happening again.

But it's hard to say the words.

"I…" He shakes his head again, forces them out. "I was so goddamn angry. All I could see was that you wanted to… to hurt my little girl. And I wanted to hurt you back, I wanted to make you pay for that. And then I saw your… reaction, and I took advantage, I forced you—"

"There's that word again," Matt interrupts. He stands up straighter, cocks his head. And fucking grins. "John, in case you didn't notice, I was perfectly happy to go along for the ride. Those lips wrapped around your cock? Mine, John, and nobody _forced_ me to put them there. That leg wrapped around your waist? Also mine, and believe me it was worth the pulled muscles in the morning."

"Jeeeeesus, kid—"

"Granted," Matt continues, "it was a little rougher than I usually like it, and some lube would've been nice, but—"

"Lube?"

Matt blinks. "Lubricant? Lotion, to ease the… never mind, I'll show you next time."

John is used to Matt using about a thousand words a minute and trying to follow along with what seems to be four simultaneous conversations, but now he's lost. And confused. And apparently… not as big of a jerk as he thought. "Next time?"

"Please," Matt says. "You don't think you're going to give me the best fuck I've ever had in my life and then leave me hanging? There is _so_ going to be a next time. And then a time after that and a time after that."

"I don't—"

"If I had said No, would you have stopped?"

"Matt—"

"Would you have stopped?"

"Of course I would have stopped," John snaps out.

"Exactly," Matt says, as if this explains everything. "So. In summary: you went a little bit insane, true, and you probably would have punched me in the nose if my body hadn't chosen just that moment to reveal that apparently I have a bit of a rough trade kink that I didn't even know about. Not that all the manhandling you do of me on a regular basis isn't enough to satisfy that little fetish. I, on the other hand, maybe should have been the one to let saner heads prevail and put a stop to it before it got out of hand, but seriously John, have you _seen_ you? After a year of UST it was all that I could do not to ride you like a pony."

John's mouth goes slack as Matt pushes off from the desk, and his hands come up automatically to grasp Matt's waist when he swings himself into his lap.

"In conclusion," Matt says, "you were a bit of an asshole, and I was a bit of a slut. Nobody got hurt, and since I happen to love the hell out of you, it all worked out for the best. And if you ever disappear on me again, I swear it'll be _months_ before I put out."

When Matt's lips touch his, it's like they've never done this before. Matt's lips are smooth and soft, and when John gasps beneath him he takes advantage of the opportunity and slips his tongue inside. They kiss unhurriedly, exploring each other like they have all the time in the world. John thinks maybe they do.

After this, everything changes.


	11. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

XI

"—and they're thinking Arizona because it's got all that wide open land. There wouldn't be anywhere for the vampires to hide during the day and… okay you don't like it."

John drops his backpack by the blue sedan and makes a face. "No, I don't like it."

"Okay," Matt says, "but the Warlock is totally sold on it, man. I guess he's been talking to the other survivors on the band and they're all gung-ho, he's practically picking out real estate—"

"I'll talk to him," John says.

"Yeah, but—"

"I got a better idea, kid," John says as he pulls himself in the cab of the jackknifed trailer. "I'll talk to him."

He waits for Matt to haul himself up beside him, scrubs a hand over his head when Matt keys up the mic. His newly shorn scalp feels strange under his palm after so long spent ignoring the razor, but he feels better with it done. More himself.

"Warlock, this is Farrell," Matt calls. "Come in."

John slants an eyebrow at the silence from the speaker, then leans back on the seat. "We're early," he says.

John deliberately doesn't mention the little fact that Matt isn't exactly sure that this is their day to check in with Freddie. In many ways, the day and a half that they spent apart has fallen into some kind of conversational black hole, mentioned in only the vaguest of terms. John doesn't talk about those hours watching the indistinct shape of his daughter moving in the back of the flower shop, or the way her head had cocked and she almost seemed to recognize him just before he pulled the trigger, or jumping behind the wheel of the yellow cab and trying to outrun the vampires until they almost got him cornered at Times Square. And Matt doesn't talk about sitting alone at the 1PP or talking to Freddie or anything else he did while waiting and wondering whether John was alive or dead.

Neither has verbalized it, but they've both clearly decided to do their best to put the past behind them and focus on the present.

And for the past three days – aside from their regular treks to and from the 1PP, where they sit and wait for other survivors that never show up – that's meant hibachi cookouts on the park bench they carried for six blocks to set up in front of the bodega. Drinking warm beer on the roof under the stars. And a lot of time spent on the worn double mattress they'd dragged down from one of the apartments – a lot of time learning exactly just how flexible a kid Matt's age can be.

John side-glances him now, studies his face in profile as Matt stares out the windshield. The long hair frames his face and curls damply at his neck, loops around the shell of his ear, and John knows from experience now just how soft that hair really is, just how sensitive that earlobe. He reaches out and touches Matt's hair now, lightly brushes his fingers through the damp strands and makes Matt jerk and shiver, before he curves his hand around the nape of his neck and ruffles the long hair there. Because he can. Can touch all he wants, taste all he wants. Because Matt is _his_ now. Because Matt _wants_ him to.

He still can't quite believe that.

Matt half-turns in the seat, eyes him speculatively. "You know," he says conversationally, "I've never fucked in a transport truck."

John raises a brow.

"I bet I could really work your stick shift," Matt says with a wiggle of those enormous eyebrows.

John snorts out a laugh. "Jesus, kid, the things that come out of your mouth."

And then he can't say any more, because his arms are suddenly full of long lean hacker, Matt's deft fingers already working on the button of his jeans, and before this past week John would've thought that his days of getting it up at the drop of a hat were long behind him once he hit the big 5-0. But apparently all it takes is Matt's hands moving assuredly over his shoulders, Matt's mouth on his collarbone, Matt's young supple body actually squirming with anticipation. All it takes is Matt.

Matt lifts himself up to slither out of his jeans, and John's mouth goes dry and his hands grip convulsively at Matt's hips as he watches Matt prepare himself. When the kid looks up at him and shakes the bangs out of his eyes and smiles, his already hard dick gets even harder.

He loves it like this, Matt sinking down slowly onto his cock, controlling the pace. Matt's head thrown back, leaving that long line of neck open for John to touch, to lick. He swipes his fingers slowly down Matt's neck to dip into the sweat already pooling at the hollow of his throat, leans up to follow the trail of his fingers with his lips. When Matt shudders he grins into his skin, sucks and nips his way to Matt's nipple and then just ghosts his breath over the nub, waits for Matt's hands to clench at his shoulders before he takes the nipple into his mouth. The only sounds in the trailer – in the whole goddamn city, it seems – are their moans and sighs, the slap of flesh meeting flesh, the litany of _John_ 's and _yes_ 's and _oh god_ 's that fall from Matt's lips because the kid can never, _ever_ shut up.

Matt's fingers dig painfully into his shoulders as he picks up the tempo, and John shifts on the seat, thrusts up to meet him. He splays one hand on the small of Matt's back to support him, finds his cock with the other, and apparently Matt's not the only one that can't stop talking because he finds himself crooning – _I've got you_ and _it's okay_ and _come on Matty_ – and when Matt tenses and spills out over his hand it only takes another couple of shallow thrusts for John to quickly follow him.

"Well," John says in the aftermath, "we should get here early more often."

He feels Matt's lip upturn against his neck, then feels the kid start to pull away and tightens his hold to keep him still. Matt shifts against him, looks up to slant him a smile. "Never figured you for a cuddler, McClane."

"There's a lot of shit you don't know about me, kid," John says mock-gruffly. His hand steals down to pinch Matt's ass, earning him a growl and a nip on the shoulder, before he slides his hand beneath Matt's T-shirt and lets it rove across all that smooth expanse of back.

"Like your big anti-Arizona plan," Matt says pointedly.

John lifts his chin, stares out the dirty windshield at the unending line of stopped cars, the buildings beyond that make up the once-great city of New York. Each car representing a person who lived and dreamed there, each window a life snuffed out. He reluctantly releases his hold on Matt, lets the kid sit up and get them cleaned up.

"The city won't be safe for much longer," he says then.

Matt nods shortly, because the kid isn't an idiot, that brain has already worked it out. He knows they can't hold out forever against the vamps, and the potential for disease from the rotting dead is off the charts. They've been safe here – as safe as they can be – but there's no way it can last. And the canned food they've been living on also won't last forever.

"We need land," he says. "Tillable land, where we can plant crops and work the soil. A big farmhouse would do, but if we could find a small town – I'm talking five houses and a general store – it would be better. We clear out the bloodsuckers in the area, take down the stairs and secure the houses, then start working the fields and erecting a fence. Stone, preferably. We find a place that's isolated enough, we can stretch out for miles in any direction."

Matt blinks, leans back on the cracked vinyl seat. "You realize that would take—"

"Years," John says. "Years to wall it all in and make is completely safe. Yeah. I get it, kid."

He sits back, lets the kid work it out for himself. "Okay," Matt says finally. "We secure all the houses, we're giving the vampires no place to hide." He frowns. "Maybe trees, shade trees? So we raze everything in, say, a two mile radius. We start with a smaller fence – smaller meaning less land coverage," he clarifies, "maybe just something wooden to keep out any wanderers… we'll need to raid a library for books on farming, find the seeds…"

"And it'll be a tough winter," John interrupts. "By the time we find a place it'll probably be too late to do any planting. We'll have to lay in enough supplies to last us through, ration what we find. Maybe do some hunting."

"We'll need fuel, maybe figure out how to siphon the gas from the underground tanks at a station, set up some generators once the initial fence is up," Matt muses. He turns his head, meets his eyes. "Warlock's not going to like it."

"Tough shit," John grunts. "Arizona'll be a fucking death trap. No arable land, get yourself killed raiding a Target for expired Spam. No way I'm letting you go to the desert, no fucking way."

Matt raises a brow at his choice of words, but John just stares at him, grits his teeth and refuses to back down. Matt can bristle all he fucking wants, but the kid is his responsibility, his… Matt is _his_ , damnit, and he's not going to lose him now, not when he's just found out how good and right this can be. Not when he's got the memory of Lucy blinking on and off in his brain, reminding him of how wrong it can go.

"The whole neandrethal drag me off by my hair to the cave thing doesn't really work on you, John."

"Matt—"

Matt holds up a hand. "It's okay, I've got years to work on your sometimes outdated views on sexual mores," he says drily. "And you have the better plan. North? Up near where we had the retreat?"

John lets out a breath. "That's what I was thinking."

Matt nods. "Warlock's still not going to like it."

He's right.

"Farmers?" Warlock yells. "You want us to be farmers? Do I look like a _farmer_ to you, McClane?"

"Get yourself a pair of overalls and a straw hat, fat boy, 'cause you're gonna be tilling fields and totin' bale come September."

"Ha," Warlock sniffs. "Funny. Can't help but notice you're a lot more chipper today, McClane." He pauses for effect, drawls out the next statement for maximum impact. "Must be getting laid."

John just smiles.

"Regular," he confirms, ignoring Matt's little yelp of protest, even if he does like the bloom of colour that rises in Matt's cheeks. "But don't despair, Freddie, we'll find you your own date for the apocalypse. I hear Roseanne Barr is free."

He leans back, blocks out most of the rest of Warlock's protests. He doesn't give a shit what the punkass jerkoff has to say. In a few weeks, they'll be heading north.


	12. Situation Normal (All Fucked Up)

XII

Once the decision to head north has been made, it all comes down to logistics. Points E through Z fill up rapidly though, with enough sections, subsections, and addendum clauses piling up to make John thankful he doesn't have any hair left to pull out.

The first order of business is finally making it to Scarpetti's, a little hole in the wall joint on Grand run by an ex-Marine pal. John half-expects to find Carlo with his feet up on the battered counter, cleaning his teeth with the finger bones of a dead vamp. But when he and Matt arrive the shop is closed up tight, the roll-down iron gate bolted over the window and door. The usual array of posters and pamphlets cram every spare inch of window space, and though John leans in and contorts his body like he's one of those crazed Cirque du Soleil freaks from last summer, he can't see a fucking thing.

"Now what?" Matt says. "I'm guessing a gun shop doesn't have a conveniently placed half-open window that we can crawl through."

"Smartass," John says, cuffing the back of Matt's head as a matter of principle as he strolls by him. He ignores Matt's half-hearted 'ow' and digs through his backpack, smirking as he pulls out the blowtorch and the goggles. "Now," he tells Matt, "you get to see why I made that raid into the hardware store."

He's about thirty minutes into the sixty minute job of cutting through the tempered steel when Matt sidles up beside him, leans a shoulder into the gate. "Did you notice that we don't really notice them anymore?"

John glances up, frowning as he pushes up the goggles. "Eh?"

Matt's shifts a little uncomfortably, eyes the antique store next to the gun shop. "The vampires," he clarifies. "I mean, we know they're there. We can see them moving around, we can hear them. God knows we can smell them. And we don't wander close to any windows," he adds with a pointed look at John. "But they don't really bother us as badly anymore."

John shuts down the torch, stands up straighter and tries to hold back the wince when his shoulder stages a protest. "We know they can't get to us," he says.

"Yeah," Matt says. He side-glances the window crowded with vintage furniture.

John sighs and sets the blowtorch down on the pavement, rolls his shoulders to work out the stiffness. He knows that look, the patented The Kid's Brain Has Gone Into Hyperdrive look, and he's not going to be able to concentrate on shit until they work through whatever it is that's got him all uneasy. "But?" he prompts.

"But I keep thinking about what the Warlock said," Matt admits. "About how the virus that started all this could mutate. What if eventually they're not affected by the sunlight? What if they started walking around in the daytime?"

"You saw what happens to them in the sun," John tries reasonably. "They fry. It's not like the laws of physics are suddenly going to stop applying here."

"The laws of physics have already stopped applying!"

What John doesn't know about the rules of physics could fill the main branch of the New York public library, so he takes the kid's word on it. Still, thinking about worst case scenarios? That way lies madness. And a liberal dose of Matt Freak Out in the middle of the night that'll rival those nightmares that he had right after the Fourth.

"Look, kid," he says patiently. "Mutation takes time, right? It ain't like one day a fish grows wings. It evolves. So even if something like that was gonna happen, it'd be years down the road when we've got our community up and running and we don't have to worry about that shit."

Matt's eyes stop darting between the buildings long enough to meet John's. "Right," he says. "You're right."

John nods. Crisis averted. He leans down to pick up the blowtorch. "Besides," he adds, "I'm not going to let anything happen to ya."

Matt cocks his head. "I forget, is that Cro-Magnon man or did you jump straight through to Neanderthal there?"

"Smartass," John says again.

Thirty-six minutes later, they're inside.

John eases the door open slowly, stands just inside the dark entranceway to let his eyes get used to the lack of light while he tracks his weapon across the miniscule room. The posters on the windows effectively block the light of the day, and the store is a sea of gloom. He waits until the long counter and displayed firearms are clear, then nods to Matt and takes a step inside.

He finds Carlo splayed behind the counter, his neck ravaged, his long grey hair clotted with blood. "Jesus," he murmurs. Until he sees him, John hadn't realized how much he'd expected to find the story empty, sure that Carlo would have loaded up his old station wagon and hightailed it out of Dodge at the first sign of trouble. The end must have come quicker than he had even thought.

Carlo's gun is still clutched in one hand.

"Uhh, McClane?" Matt says from behind him. "What happened to the vampire who got him?"

Shit.

John motions for Matt to stay back before he steps carefully over the body of his friend. The door to the little room where Carlo kept his books and stored his extra supplies is ajar, and he mentally counts to three before pushing the door open with his shoulder and diving into the room.

Nothing.

Which is when he hears the light tread of footsteps from the short hallway that leads to the bathroom. On the other side of the store.

He pivots quickly, darts back out into the main part of the shop in time to see the shadow emerge from the darkened bathroom. Only seven steps from the bathroom to the door of the shop, John's made the trip often enough on those nights when he stopped by at the end of his shift to shoot the shit with Carlo and catch part of the game on his little thirteen inch black and white. He raises his gun, and—

"Matt! Get outta the way!"

He can't get a clean shot as the vampire advances another step, and Matt is still in the way, Matt is moving _toward_ the door; John flies forward, slams his hip into the counter as he struggles to find the space for a killing shot, and—

Matt slams the door shut just as the vampire reaches it, reaches out quickly to turn the bolt.

"Jesus Christ, Matthew!" John yells.

Matt turns a very pale face to his, tries to smile but to John it looks more like a grimace. "I think," Matt says, "that we should load up and get the fuck out of here."

* * *

The problem, John thinks as he scrapes a hand over his jaw and surveys the growing pile of supplies, with finding a place to hole up at in the boonies is that it'll be in the fucking boonies. Their farmhouse-slash-small-town will theoretically be far enough off the beaten track as to limit the concentration of bloodsuckers, both already there and wandering in from the cities. But that also means that running out of supplies would mean venturing further afield from their home base, and John sure as hell doesn't want to get stuck out in the open country after dark.

He takes a big step over the precariously stacked cans of vegetables, turns sideways to edge his way past the towering mound of toilet paper, and threads his way through the bodega to the street. From absolutely necessary to potentially useful, every item from the bodega and the apartments above – not to mention every car and truck in a ten-block radius, the Rite Aid, and any non-vamp-infested shop in the area – has been crowded into the storefront and meticulously documented by Matt, who has worked out some kind of elaborate system to determine the absolute minimum their little group will require to make it through to the spring. John takes that minimum and adds twenty-five percent. Just to be safe.

Matt says he's overcompensating – Freddie and the other groups will be loading up and carting out supplies as well – but John's learned over the years not to count on anybody but himself.

Now, he turns his back on the mounds of provisions and plants a hand on his hip, squinting as he studies their wheels. The armoured SWAT van had been a bitch to steal, but John figured it would be perfect for their needs – sturdy enough to make it over rough country, protected from the bloodsuckers if they couldn't find and secure a temporary house before dark on the first night. Or the night after that. He had also figured that they could pile their supplies in the back, and if that meant they were sleeping on cans of creamed corn for a few nights, well, his back wouldn't thank him but they'd survive.

What he didn't figure was exactly how much space it took to fit in food and water and toiletries and medical supplies and on and fucking on. Even two of the vans wouldn't be able to hold all their shit. Not that he's even figured out how they're going to maneuver the big vehicle around the crashed and abandoned cars in the streets. Yeah, Point P is a real fucking bitch.

There's no way around it, he thinks as he pulls the baseball cap from his head, swipes his wrist over the sweat on his brow. They're going to have to go back and try for a prisoner transfer bus. Or a school bus. Hell, maybe one of those double decker monstrosities that they use to schlep the tourists. And if the SWAT van will be tough, he doesn't even want to think about how they're going to get a bus through the snarls of traffic. He shakes his head, sets the cap more firmly on his head. Maybe Matt will have an idea.

As if summoned, he hears the clatter of Matt's bike hitting the pavement, glances up to see the kid stagger from the ten-speed half a block away. The greeting he's about to call out dies in his throat as he sees Matt bend over, clutching at his side… and then he is running down the street without realizing he's moved, plans of evacuation forgotten, his entire body screaming _shouldn't have let him go alone_ and _no no no_ and _mutation_.

He grasps Matt's arm, pulls the kid upright and runs his hands quickly over his body before he frames his face with his hands. The eyes are wide and he's covered with sweat, but he seems okay.

"Matt! Kid! Are you hurt? Talk to me, kid."

"Warlock made contact… new group… survivors," Matt gasps out. He bends over and John lets him go but keeps a steadying hand on his arm. Sweat drips from his hair to plop in large drops onto the pavement as he hacks out a rasping cough, and John runs his hand up and down his back to quiet the tremors. "Rode… so fast," Matt gulps out.

"Okay, Matty," he says soothingly. "Take your time."

Matt shakes his head emphatically, swallows convulsively and takes a deep shuddering breath. "At the university," he rasps out. "Boulder." He lifts his head, wide shocked eyes peering through his bangs. "John… one of them is Jack."

* * *

"Do you know what it's like to hear _Frederick Kaludis_ tell you he loves you?" John asks. "I know he was just passing on Jack's message, but—" He shudders elaborately.

"Actually, there was this one time at space camp--" Matt starts.

John looks up sharply. Matt and that overweight self-important douchebag?

"Not like that, you perv," Matt laughs.

John has a sudden flash of the night before, spread-eagled on his stomach on the old mattress, while Matt did things to him with his tongue that would make a sailor blush. "Yeah," he mutters, " _I'm_ the pervert."

And he's starting the think that the apocalypse has brought out some weird psychic powers in the kid or something, because Matt side-glances him before sticking out his tongue and wiggling it elaborately. And there's nothing to do for that than snake out a hand, grab the kid around the waist and tow him in, and stick that tongue in his mouth where it belongs.

"Aaaaanyway," Matt says when they finally part and are walking again, "you can put away the club, McClane. The incident I'm talking about didn't involve any full frontal nudity or any excretion of bodily fluids." He frowns. "Unless you count all the amaretto sour the Warlock threw up the next day."

"That better be all," John grunts out. Matt can joke about it all he wants, but the truth is he might be a bit… territorial. And he'd hate to start things out in their new digs by beating Warlock to death.

Matt just shakes his head. "John," he says, "I did have a life before I met you. Not," he adds quickly, "that it included the Warlock. Besides, you're one to talk. You were _married_! And anyway, you should be thankful that I did," he continues cheekily, " since I learned all those mad skills in the bedroom."

John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well that's over now," he says. He reaches out to cup Matt's ass, gives a pinch and grins when Matt gasps and squirms away, laughing. "This ass is mine."

"Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in."

John pulls his hand away quickly, feels his mouth drop open even as he's spinning toward the sound of the voice. "Jesus Christ," he murmurs.

"Hey, John," Lambert calls out. He gestures over his shoulder to the weather-beaten sign still propped up outside the precinct. "We got your note."

* * *

After the hugs and handshakes and back-slapping, they sit on the wide stone steps and compare war stories. John fills them in on the basics of the last few weeks while Matt provides the colour commentary, sitting close enough that their knees touch and gesticulating with his arms whenever he has a particularly exciting point to make. Joe takes the lead for the visiting team, deferring to Connie when he isn't sure of the details.

"So it took a while to get Connie's parents situated," Joe finishes. "Her old man's what, eighty one now?"

"Eighty two," Connie says.

"Eighty two. But we finally got them safe and set for a week, then headed here." Joe glances around the empty plaza. "You really haven't found anyone else? We found five people, and we were in fucking _Trenton_."

John shrugs, follows Joe's gaze. In the shadows at the back of the shops the vampires stir, nebulous forms in the dark. "They've gotta be hiding," he answers. "Curled up in back rooms, afraid to come out."

"I don't think we… I don't think we can imagine how bad it must have been here," Matt puts in.

"I don't know," Connie says. "I can imagine plenty."

John closes his eyes briefly against the flash of Lucy in his skull. He did the last, best thing for her that a father could do. He has to hold on to that. And Jack… Jack is alive.

"So," Joe says into the silence, raising a brow. "You two?"

John's throat suddenly feels very tight. But he nods shortly, reaches out to place his hand on the small of Matt's back and urge him a little closer. "Yeah", he says. "Matt and I are—" He hesitates, unsure. Lovers, partners, boyfriends? He hasn't ever considered how to define it. They just _are_.

"Thank God," Connie brays out, saving him the trouble. "Joe, you owe me twenty bucks."

"Hell, want a million?" Joe says. "I can stroll over to Bank of America and make a withdrawal."

Matt laughs. "You two were actually betting on when McClane would get laid?"

"Hell no," Connie says. "John could get laid anytime, that's easy. We were betting on when he'd finally get together with _you_ , kiddo."

"So let me get this straight," Joe says, leaning back on his elbows. "The kid living in your house for two months last summer didn't do it. The late night dinners at Italian bistros, the long weekends at your house.. those didn't do it. The remote cottage in the middle of the woods didn't do it."

"And after you and Carmichael froze your balls off that night to give them some alone time," Connie puts in.

Joe nods. "But the vampocalypse? _That_ gets you into the kid's pants?"

John hasn't blushed since he was nineteen and in his first year at the academy. He looks off into the distance and thinks about geometry, about the Yankees pitching last season, about the coffee cake from Delmonico's, about anything at all – because he sure as fuck doesn't intend to start now.

Later, while Matt is doling out some of their supplies to Connie, John takes Joe aside.

"You sure you don't wanna stay here with us?" John asks.

"Nah, we got a place over on West 44th, pretty secure. Besides, I don't wanna cramp your style, John."

John grunts. "You just wish you had a hot young thing drooling over your dick."

Connie lifts her head. "Hey, what am I, chopped liver?" she calls over.

"You're an angel, my pet," Joe calls back.

They see Connie turn back to Matt with a roll of her eyes. "Men," she huffs out.

* * *

John lifts a hand as Connie's car accelerates down the street, waits until the tail lights have disappeared from view before he turns and studies the two vehicles parked outside the bodega. It had taken five days, but with Joe and Connie's help they'd managed to clear a path through the streets. The bus is crammed to the brim with provisions, and the tanks are fully fueled with gas siphoned from abandoned cars. In the morning Matt will take the wheel of the SWAT van and John will take the bus, and they'd head north. To a new life.

The newly installed CB radio in Connie's car will let them keep in touch until Joe and Connie and their motley group of survivors follow in a few weeks.

There are still a few hours of daylight left, but John pulls across the gate and locks them down when he steps inside the store. The bodega looks woefully empty, the shelves almost stripped bare except for items like old-fashioned shower caps and dust-covered piggy banks. As for John himself, he feels a strange sense of melancholy. The bodega has been home for a few weeks, and New York has been home most of his life. He experienced amazing and crazy and death-defying things in both places. Knowing that after tonight he will probably never be here again, never walk these streets or see the sun sparkle on a hundred mirrored towers or sleep on that dumpy mattress in the crowded back room…

He shakes his head to push away the thoughts; strolls to the back of the store and finds Matt cross-legged on the bed with his spiral notepad on his lap, going over a final count of their supplies one last time. The kid glances up distractedly when John plops down next to him. "They get off okay?"

"Uh huh," John murmurs. He lifts a hand to Matt's hair, lets his fingers tangle in the long strands. Matt has taken to saying that he's obsessed with his hair – "because all you can grow are those porcupine bristles, McClane," he said just last night. "You've got a definite case of hair envy." – but John notices that doesn't stop Matt from leaning into the touch or his eyelids from dropping to half mast. He ruffles the long hair at the nape of Matt's neck before he forces his hand away and clears his throat. "Kid," he says.

"Hmm," Matt mumbles.

"Matt," John says a little louder. "I need to talk to you."

Matt makes a note next to one of the items on the list before he looks up. "Yeah?"

Now that the time has come to speak, John's mouth is parched and his heart is beating double time. He swallows dryly, but he meets Matt's eyes squarely. "You know I would never leave you," he begins.

For a moment Matt just looks at him. Then he carefully puts down his pen. "Okay?"

John searches Matt's eyes, seeking any hint of wariness, any clue that the kid is steeling himself for the disappointment that he always knew would come, the promise made to be broken. But Matt is simply looking at him calmly, and he's not sure whether that makes it easier or more difficult to go on.

He mentally runs through everything he wants to say – about how proud he is that Jack is in charge of his little group in Boulder, but how he fears that that burden of responsibility is too much for a nineteen year old to bear. About the delays the Boulder survivors are facing before they can even begin their leg of the journey – the woman, Marilyn, due with her first child in less than a month, and the kid with the broken ankle. About how Matt's safety is his first priority, and he'll make sure the new settlement is fortified and well stocked before he leaves. About how much having Matt in his life now means to him, and how he can't imagine ever being without him.

He opens his mouth to say all this and more, and what comes out is, "Once we're settled, I'm going to help Jack's group in Boulder."

"Ohhhh," Matt says. "Jesus, John, that's your big announcement? I thought you were gearing up to tell me that you and Lambert were running away together or something. Yeah, I already figured that. I'll be going with you." Matt picks up his pen, squints down at the notebook. "I'm really not sure we've got enough coffee," he muses.

John blinks, not sure he's heard right. But when Matt just flips over a page and starts reconfiguring the coffee provisions, he reaches out and grabs the pen. "You are not going with--- Matt, this ain't a walk in the park, it's going to be fucking dangerous. I can't let you put yourself at risk—"

"Okay," Matt huffs out after he watches the pen sail through the air. "You know what? It was cute the first couple of times, and I'm not going to deny that a little dominance in the sack makes my dick hard, and maybe you don't even realize what you sound like, but _fuck_ , John! You don't get to _let_ me do anything. We discuss things. That's how this works. If we're together, then we make decisions _together_. And in this case, okay, fine, you've got to be with your son, I get that, I get the whole 'I'm leaving without talking this out with you at all' thing, but if that's how it works that I'm telling you that I'm going too, and that's it, man! Because guess what, I'm not exactly the fucking village idiot, and we're a team now, and if you can't handle that—"

John's always been fascinated by the way Matt throws his whole body into it when he's passionate about something, but now he grabs at Matt's flailing arms, pins them to his side and lets his momentum carry them backward on the bed. Only when he's straddling Matt's body and the kid is huffing indignantly into his face does he lean down and press an open-mouthed kiss to Matt's cheek before dragging his lips to his earlobe and pulling it into his mouth. He nips gently before whispering, "I can handle that."

When Matt's body relaxes beneath him, he lets go and rolls to his side. The kid waits a few seconds before turning onto his own side, scowls at him from beneath those overgrown brows. "Don't think this lets you off the hook all the time," Matt says. "You gotta stop with that barbarian he-man shit."

"Unless it's in the sack," John says.

Matt rolls his eyes. "I'm just saying—"

"I know, kid. I get it." Somewhere, in a formless memory, he remembers Holly expressing much the same request. He tries not to think about how that worked out, reaches out a hand to brush his fingers lightly down Matt's cheek. "I'll try," he says.

"Try hard," Matt says firmly, but he moves a little closer.

"I will," John promises. He doesn't make promises lightly, can only hope Matt knows it. And the realizes suddenly that maybe there's something else Matt needs to know, too. He takes a breath and the plunge in one fell swoop. "I kind of love the hell out of you too, kid."

Matt's lips upturn just before they meet John's, and when they part he lifts a brow. "So. What about… us?" he asks. "Is Jack going to be cool with it?"

"He better be," John answers, "or Henry will have something to say about it."

"Henry?"

"Jack's boyfriend," John says dryly.

* * *

They don't have to drive by the precinct on the way out of town, but John wants to make one final check. The newly painted sign – Heading North To Wide Open Spaces. Monitor CB Band 66.6 – can be seen all the way from the road, and the half dozen citizen band radios they snagged from Best Buy are well protected under their tarp. Not exactly the village idiot, indeed.

John lets his gaze rove over the imposing building, gives himself permission to feel the loss. Then he sits up straighter, honks the horn on the bus to let Matt know he's pulling out.

He says goodbye to the past. And from where he's sitting, despite everything, the future looks pretty damn bright.

THE END


End file.
